Research overview: bobcat diet and prey use across the urban gradient

Bobcats remain largely carnivorous specialists on small mammals even in human-dominated landscapes, but their diet and foraging shift along the urban gradient. This overview synthesises scat and stable-isotope studies examining reliance on rabbits, rodents and other prey, the degree to which bobcats exploit human-associated rodent abundance, and whether they take anthropogenic food directly. It connects diet to the rodenticide-exposure pathway, since hunting poisoned rodents is the route by which toxicants enter bobcats, and discusses how prey availability structures home-range size near development. The synthesis frames diet as a key link between bobcat ecology and the toxic and trophic dynamics of cities.