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

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

SUBMITTER: Devarajan K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11864191 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature