The dynamic environmental conditions in highly seasonal systems likely have a strong influence on how species use the landscape. Animals must balance seasonal and daily changes to landscape risk with the underlying resources provided by that landscape. One way to balance the seasonal and daily changes in the costs and benefits of a landscape is through behaviorally-explicit resource selection and temporal partitioning. Here, we test whether resource selection of coyotes (Canis latrans) in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, Nova Scotia, Canada is behaviorally-explicit and responsive to the daily and seasonal variation to presumed costs and benefits of moving on the landscape. We used GPS data and local convex hulls to estimate space use and Hidden Markov Models to estimate three types of movement behavior: encamped, foraging, and traveling. We then used integrated step-selection analysis to investigate behaviorally explicit resource selection across times of day (diurnal, crepuscular, and nocturnal) and season (snow-free and snow). We found that throughout the day and seasonally coyotes shifted foraging behavior and altered behavior and resource choices to avoid moving across what we could be a challenging landscape. These changes in behavior suggest that coyotes have a complex response to land cover, terrain, and linear corridors that are not only scale dependent but also vary by behavior, diel period, and season. By examining the resource selection across three axes (behavior, time of day, and season), we have a more nuanced understanding of how a predator balances the cost and benefits of a stochastic environment.

在高度季节性的系统中，动态的环境条件可能会对物种如何利用景观产生重大影响。动物必须平衡景观风险的季节性和每日变化与该景观提供的基础资源。平衡景观成本和收益的季节性和每日变化的一种方法是通过行为明确的资源选择和时间划分。在这里，我们测试了土狼（Canis latrans）位于加拿大新斯科舍省布雷顿角高地国家公园，行为举止明确，对每日和季节性变化对在景观上行走的假定成本和收益做出反应。我们使用GPS数据和局部凸包来估计空间使用情况，并使用隐马尔可夫模型来估计三种类型的运动行为：扎营，觅食和旅行。然后，我们使用集成的分步选择分析来调查一天（白天，夜间和夜间）和季节（无雪和下雪）中行为明确的资源选择。我们发现，土狼全天和季节性改变觅食行为，改变行为和资源选择，从而避免在充满挑战的环境中穿行。这些行为上的变化表明，土狼对土地覆盖，地形，以及不仅取决于规模的线性走廊，而且还因行为，迪尔时期和季节而异。通过检查三个方向（行为，一天中的时间和季节）的资源选择，我们对天敌如何平衡随机环境的成本和收益有了更细微的了解。