When the wild things are: Defining mammalian diel activity and plasticity

  • February 26, 2025
  • by Devarajan K., Fidino M., Farris Z., Adalsteinsson S., Andrade-Ponce G., Angstmann J., Anthonysamy W., Aquino J., Asefa A., Avila B., Bailey L., Maria de Sousa Barbosa L., de Frias Barreto M., Barton O., Bates C., Guimarães Beltrão M., Bird T., Biro E., Bisi F., Bohórquez D., Boyce M., Brashares J., Bullington G., Burns P., Burr J., Butler A., Calhoun K., Trung Cao T., Casado N., Camilo Cepeda-Duque J., Cepek J., Garcia Chiarello A., Collins M., Cordeiro-Estrela P., Costa S., Cremonesi G., Cristescu B., Cruz P., Carolina Figueiredo de Albuquerque A., De Angelo C., Bueno de Campos C., Mara Mendes de Sena L., Di Bitetti M., de Matos Dias D., Diefenbach D., S. Doherty T., P. dos Santos T., Teixeira Duarte G., Eppley T., Erb J., Franco Esteves C., Evans B., Falcão M., Fernandes-Ferreira H., Fieberg J., Carlos Firmino de Souza Filho L., Fisher J., Fortin M-J, Gale G., Gallo T., Ganoe L., Garcia-Anleu R., Gaynor K., Gelmi-Candusso T., Gichuru P., Gomez Q., Green A., Neves Guimarães L., Haight J., Harris L., Hawn Z., Heiman J., Quoc Hoang H., Huebner S., Iannarilli F., Eugenia Iezzi M., Ivan J., Jaspers K., Jordan M., Kamilar J., Kane M., Hosein Karimi M., Kelly M., Kohl M., Kuvlesky W., Ladle A., Larson R., Tan Le Q., Le D., Son Le V., Lehrer E., Lendrum P., Lewis J., Link A., Lizcano D., Lombardi J., Long R., López-Tello E., Lugarini C., Lugo D., MacKay P., Madadi M., Assis Magalhães R., Magle S., Hufnagel Regis Diniz Maia L., Mandujano S., Marchenkova T., Henrique Marinho P., Marker L. L., Martinez Pardo J., Martinoli A., Lima Massara R., Masseloux J., Matiukhina D., Mayer A., Mazariegos L., McClung M., McInturff A., McPhail D., Mertl A., Middaugh C., Miller D., Mills D., Miquelle D., Miritis V., Moll R., Molnár P., Montgomery R., Lyn Morelli T., Mortelliti A., Mueller R., Mukhacheva A., Mullen K., Murphy A., Nepomuceno V., Ngoprasert D., Nguyen A., Van Nguyen T., Thai Nguyen V., Anh Nguyen Quang H., Nipko R., Clarissa Costa Nobre A., Northrup J., Pereira Paglia A., Palmer M., Palomo-Munoz G., Pardo L., Parks C., Maria de Oliveira Paschoal A., Patterson B., Paviolo A., Pejchar L., Pendergast M., Perotto-Baldivieso H., Petrov T., Poisson M., Jeronimo Polli D., Pourmirzai M., Reebin A., Remine K., Rich L., Richardson C., Robino F., Rocha D., Lopes Rocha F., Henrique Guimarães Rodrigues F., Rohnke A., Ryan T., Salsbury C., Sander H., Maria da Cruz Santos-Cavalcante N., Sekercioglu C., Seryodkin I., Owen M., Hendra Setiawan D., Shadloo S., Shahhosseini M., Shannon G., Shier C., Snyder T., Sollmann R., Sparks K., Sribuarod K., St. Clair C.C., Stankowich T., Steinmetz R., Stevenson C., Sunarto S., Surasinghe T., Sutyrina S., Swaisgood R., Taktehrani A., Thapa K., Thorton M., Tilker A., Tobler M., Bang Tran V., Tucker J., Van Horn R., Vargas-Soto J., Velásquez-C K., Venter J., Venticinque E., Verschueren S., Wampole E., Watchorn D., Wearn O., Weiss K., Welschen A., Anggriawan Widodo F., Williamson J., Wilting A., Wittemyer G., Zavaleta A., Zellmer A., Gerber B.

Abstract: Circadian rhythms are a mechanism by which species adapt to environmental variability and fundamental to understanding species behavior. However, we lack data and a standardized framework to accurately assess and compare temporal activity for species during rapid ecological change. Through a global network representing 38 countries, we leveraged 8.9 million mammalian observations to create a library of 14,587 standardized diel activity estimates for 445 species. We found that less than half the species’ estimates were in agreement with diel classifications from the reference literature and that species commonly used more than one diel classification. Species diel activity was highly plastic when exposed to anthropogenic change. Furthermore, body size and distributional extent were strongly associated with whether a species is diurnal or nocturnal. Our findings provide essential knowledge of species behavior in an era of rapid global change and suggest the need for a new, quantitative framework that defines diel activity logically and consistently while capturing species plasticity.

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