Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Biol Lett. 2018 Jun;14(6). doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2018.0115.
Differences in temporal patterns of activity can modulate the ambient conditions to which organisms are exposed, providing an important mechanism for responding to environmental change. Such differences may be particularly relevant to ecological generalists, which are expected to encounter a wider range of environmental conditions. Here, we compare temporal patterns of activity for partially sympatric populations of a generalist (the lodgepole chipmunk, ) and a more specialized congener (the alpine chipmunk, ) that have displayed divergent responses to the past century of environmental change. Although mean activity budgets were similar between species, analyses of individual-level variation in locomotion revealed that exhibited a narrower range of activity patterns than Further analyses revealed that was more active earlier in the day, when temperatures were cooler, and that activity patterns for both species changed with increased interspecific co-occurrence. These results are consistent with the greater responsiveness of to changes in environmental conditions. In addition to highlighting the utility of accelerometers for collecting behavioural data, our findings add to a growing body of evidence, suggesting that the greater phenotypic variability displayed by ecological generalists may be critical to responses to environmental change.
活动时间格局的差异可以调节生物所暴露于其中的环境条件，为应对环境变化提供了一种重要机制。这种差异对于生态广适种（如林跳鼠）可能尤为重要，因为它们预计会遇到更广泛的环境条件。在这里，我们比较了具有部分同域分布的广适种（林跳鼠）和更为特化的近缘种（高山林鼠）的活动时间格局，这两个近缘种对过去一个世纪的环境变化表现出了不同的响应。尽管两种物种的平均活动预算相似，但对个体水平运动变化的分析表明，林跳鼠的活动模式范围比高山林鼠更窄。进一步的分析表明，林跳鼠在白天较早的时候、当温度较低时更为活跃，而且两种物种的活动模式都随着种间共存的增加而发生变化。这些结果与林跳鼠对环境条件变化的响应更强是一致的。除了强调加速度计在收集行为数据方面的实用性外，我们的研究结果还增加了越来越多的证据，表明生态广适种表现出的更大表型可变性对于其对环境变化的响应可能至关重要。
