Activity Pattern Among Sympatric Leopard Cat,Asian Badger and Hog Badger in Wulingshan Nature Reserve,Beijing
[Objectives]Activity pattern is an important part of behavioral ecology research.Understanding the activity pattern of wild animals is a prerequisite for analyzing their survival strategies.Beijing Wulingshan Nature Reserve is an important carnivore distribution hotspot with much scientific research value.It will contribute to effective biodiversity management by revealing the co-existence adaptation among the carnivores.[Methods]In this study,camera trapping technology was used to study the activity patterns of sympatric Leopard Cat Prionailurus bengalensis,Asian Badger Meles leucurus and Hog Badger Arctonyx collaris distributed in Beijing Wulingshan Nature Reserves.A total of 35 infrared cameras were deployed with 8 400 camera-days during the study period of the whole 2017.Among the independent camera photos,there were 393 for Leopard Cat,682 for Asian Badger,and 797 for Hog Badger.Using the"activity"and"overlap"packages in R,the non-parametric kernel density approach was used to examine the activity patterns based on the collected data.Using the"CompareCkern"in R Studio and a 500-run round robin test,the overlap coefficients were determined.[Results]The results indicated that the annual activity pattern of the three animals changed with seasons in similar patterns and the highest activity peak happened in early autumn(Fig.2).The overlap factor of the activity patterns between Leopard Cat and Asian Badger were high in spring and autumn(Δ=0.747 5 in spring and Δ=0.772 8 in autumn),while the activity peaks were different(Fig.3).In spring,the activity peaks of the Leopard Cat appeared in 3:00-5:00 and 21:00-23:00,while the Asian Badger were more active in 23:00-1:00 and 16:00-18:00 that were earlier than the Leopard Cat.In autumn,the Leopard Cat had two peaks in 3:00-5:00 and 20:00-22:00,whereas the Asian Badger only had one peak in 21:00-23:00(Fig.3).The Leopard Cat and the Hog Badger had similar activity trends in spring and summer,on the contrary,the activity patterns were different in autumn and winter(Fig.4).The activity patterns of Asian Badger and Hog Badger showed much different in spring,summer and autumn.The activity peak of Asian Badger appeared in 16:00-18:00 in spring,15:00-17:00 in summer,and 21:00-23:00 in autumn while the Hog Badger was in relatively low activity during the same time periods(Fig.5).[Conclusion]Through the differentiation in activity peaks,these three carnivore species produced a fine scale temporal separation and realized the co-existence of sympatric distribution.This study strengthens the understanding of the coexistence strategies of the three species which provides baseline information for conducting further studies on carnivore behavioral adaptation and planning habitat conservation measures.
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