![]() ![]() Under such conditions, the effectiveness of darkness for concealment may decrease in relation to moon luminosity 18, 22, with predator hunting success varying with the moon phase 23. For example, stalk and ambush predators, which largely depend on some form of concealment to approach their prey 14, 16, may use darkness as a substitute for physical cover 18 and shift from diurnal to nocturnal hunting as habitats vary from closed to open, despite the main activity of their prey being diurnal 19, 20, 21. This trade-off is dependent on the predators’ hunting mode, landscape cover and prey behaviour 15, 16, 17. Here, a predator's decision on when to hunt is a trade-off between the encounter rate (related to prey activity) and the probability of successfully catching prey given an encounter. However, such correlations are not a necessary condition for predator–prey relationships, since hunting success may be independent of prey activity (with the focus instead being on ‘prey catchability 14, 15). In predators, particularly large carnivores, activity patterns are commonly expected to follow the movement of their main prey 7, 8, 9, because prey activity is positively correlated to ease of capture 10, 11 or encounter rate 12, 13. Such seasonal changes in daily activity patterns may be reinforced or reduced in response to ongoing climate change 6. These daily patterns may exhibit seasonality because of seasonal variation in resource distribution or social dynamics, or varying impacts of weather cycles in habitats with summer and winter extremes. Temporal patterns are most prominent over daily circadian time scales, with species having various anatomical, physiological and behavioural adaptations suited for specific light and temperature conditions (i.e. Spatial and temporal niche selection of carnivores and their prey involves trade-offs between the resource gains of food and mates, and the costs of exposure to competitors, predators, hunters or environmental extremes 1, 2, 3. It is likely that climate change will intensify seasonal effects on the snow leopard's daily temporal niche for thermoregulation in the future. These patterns suggest that to minimise human-wildlife conflict, livestock should be corralled at night and dawn in summer, and dusk in winter. ![]() We interpret these results in relation to: (1) darkness as concealment for snow leopards when stalking in an open landscape (nocturnal activity), (2) low-intermediate light preferred for predatory ambush in steep rocky terrain (dawn and dusk activity), and (3) seasonal activity adjustments to facilitate thermoregulation in an extreme environment. Snow leopard activity was in contrast to their prey, which were consistently diurnal. Snow leopards were facultatively nocturnal with season-specific crepuscular activity peaks: seasonal activity shifted towards night-sunrise during summer, and day-sunset in winter. We fitted GPS-collars with activity loggers to snow leopards, Siberian ibex ( Capra sibirica: their main prey), and domestic goats ( Capra hircus: common livestock prey) in Mongolia between 20. The daily and seasonal activity patterns of snow leopards (Panthera uncia) are poorly understood, limiting our ecological understanding and hampering our ability to mitigate threats such as climate change and retaliatory killing in response to livestock predation. ![]()
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