Mammals adjust diel activity across gradients of urbanization
- George Mason University, United States
- Lincoln Park Zoo, United States
- University of Rhode Island, United States
- Kansas State University, United States
- Butler University, United States
- California State University, Long Beach, United States
- St. Edward's University, United States
- University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States
- City of Austin, United States
- University of Alberta, Canada
- University of Iowa, United States
- Brandywine Zoo, United States
- The Nature Conservancy, United States
- Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, United States
Abstract
Time is a fundamental component of ecological processes. How animal behavior changes over time has been explored through well-known ecological theories like niche partitioning and predator-prey dynamics. Yet, changes in animal behavior within the shorter 24-hour light-dark cycle have largely gone unstudied. Understanding if an animal can adjust their temporal activity to mitigate or adapt to environmental change has become a recent topic of discussion and is important for effective wildlife management and conservation. While spatial habitat is a fundamental consideration in wildlife management and conservation, temporal habitat is often ignored. We formulated a temporal resource selection model to quantify the diel behavior of eight mammal species across ten U.S. cities. We found high variability in diel activity patterns within and among species and species-specific correlations between diel activity and human population density, impervious land cover, available greenspace, vegetation cover, and mean daily temperature. We also found that some species may modulate temporal behaviors to manage both natural and anthropogenic risks. Our results highlight the complexity with which temporal activity patterns interact with local environmental characteristics, and suggest that urban mammals may use time along the 24-hour cycle to reduce risk, adapt, and therefore persist, and in some cases thrive, in human-dominated ecosystems.
Data availability
All related data and R scripts have been deposited at Dryad: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fxpnvx0tb
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Mammals adjust diel activity across gradients of urbanizationDryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.fxpnvx0tb.
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Author details
Funding
Abra Prentice-Wilkin Foundation
- Travis Gallo
- Mason Fidino
- Elizabeth W Lehrer
- Maureen H Murray
- Seth B Magle
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.
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Mammals adjust diel activity across gradients of urbanization
eLife 11:e74756.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.74756
Further reading
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Prey must balance predator avoidance with feeding, a central dilemma in prey refuge theory. Additionally, prey must assess predatory imminence—how close threats are in space and time. Predatory imminence theory classifies defensive behaviors into three defense modes: pre-encounter, post-encounter, and circa-strike, corresponding to increasing levels of threat—–suspecting, detecting, and contacting a predator. Although predatory risk often varies in spatial distribution and imminence, how these factors intersect to influence defensive behaviors is poorly understood. Integrating these factors into a naturalistic environment enables comprehensive analysis of multiple defense modes in consistent conditions. Here, we combine prey refuge and predatory imminence theories to develop a model system of nematode defensive behaviors, with Caenorhabditis elegans as prey and Pristionchus pacificus as predator. In a foraging environment comprised of a food-rich, high-risk patch and a food-poor, low-risk refuge, C. elegans innately exhibits circa-strike behaviors. With experience, it learns post- and pre-encounter behaviors that proactively anticipate threats. These defense modes intensify with predator lethality, with only life-threatening predators capable of eliciting all three modes. SEB-3 receptors and NLP-49 peptides, key stress regulators, vary in their impact and interdependence across defense modes. Overall, our model system reveals fine-grained insights into how stress-related signaling regulates defensive behaviors.
