Biogeography of time partitioning in mammals

Abstract

Many animals regulate their activity over a 24-h sleep-wake cycle, concentrating their peak periods of activity to coincide with the hours of daylight, darkness, or twilight, or using different periods of light and darkness in more complex ways. These behavioral differences, which are in themselves functional traits, are associated with suites of physiological and morphological adaptations with implications for the ecological roles of species. The biogeography of diel time partitioning is, however, poorly understood. Here, we document basic biogeographic patterns of time partitioning by mammals and ecologically relevant large-scale patterns of natural variation in "illuminated activity time" constrained by temperature, and we determine how well the first of these are predicted by the second. Although the majority of mammals are nocturnal, the distributions of diurnal and crepuscular species richness are strongly associated with the availability of biologically useful daylight and twilight, respectively. Cathemerality is associated with relatively long hours of daylight and twilight in the northern Holarctic region, whereas the proportion of nocturnal species is highest in arid regions and lowest at extreme high altitudes. Although thermal constraints on activity have been identified as key to the distributions of organisms, constraints due to functional adaptation to the light environment are less well studied. Global patterns in diversity are constrained by the availability of the temporal niche; disruption of these constraints by the spread of artificial lighting and anthropogenic climate change, and the potential effects on time partitioning, are likely to be critical influences on species' future distributions.cathemeral | night N atural cycles of light and darkness structure the environment of the majority of eukaryotic organisms. The rotation of the Earth partitions time into regular cycles of day and night, and although all points on the Earth's surface receive roughly equal durations of light and darkness over the course of a year, at mid to high latitudes seasonal variation in day length imposes an uneven distribution throughout the annual cycle. During the hours when the sun is below the horizon, there is seasonal and latitudinal variation in the duration of "biologically useful semidarkness" in the form of twilight and moonlight (1), modified by both the lunar cycle and variable cloud cover, providing changing opportunities for animals able to use visual cues for key behaviors including foraging, predator avoidance, and reproduction (2-6). Activity during both daylight and semidarkness may be further constrained by covariance between the natural cycles of light and temperature; the metabolic costs of thermoregulation place constraints on the time available for activity (7). Thermal constraints may limit nocturnal activity when nighttime temperatures are low, and diurnal activity when temperatures are high. Furthermore, energetic constraints may force some species to be active throughout hours of both ...

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