Temporal overlap among small- and medium-sized mammals in a grassland and a forest-alpine meadow of Central Asia

Assessing carnivores and prey temporal activity patterns as well as their overlap provides valuable insights into behaviouralmitigations of competition. Moon phases may also play an important role in shaping wild mammals' activity rhythms withprey showing peaks of activity in darkest nights. Camera trapping has enriched the possibility to conduct systematic studiesof activity patterns and temporal niche overlap on mammalian guilds. In this study, we used camera traps to investigate intraguildinteractions and temporal partitioning among three meso-carnivores and their common prey in two Mongolian areascharacterized, respectively, by a grassland and a forest-alpine meadow. We detected a moderate-high interspecific overlapin red foxes, pikas and tolai hares. We found a moderate overlap of temporal activity patterns among nocturnal carnivores aswell as among nocturnal prey species. Interestingly, we observed a moderate overlap between hares and meso-carnivores.Amongst nocturnal species, the red fox and the stoat had a peak in activity in the brightest nights, the stone marten and theMongolian silver vole preferred to range in dark nights, whereas activity of the tolai hare was not dependent on moon phases.Our work provides some first insights of temporal pattern interactions within a small- and meso-mammal assemblage inCentral Asia. Our results indicate that meso-carnivores and their potential prey can co-occur in Central Mongolia by meansof temporal partitioning.