Temporal Response of Mesocarnivores to Human Activity and Infrastructure in Taihang Mountains, Central North China: Shifts in Activity Patterns and Their Overlap

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Humans alter how carnivores interact with one another by changing landscapes and inciting fear. We investigated how four mesocarnivores (medium-sized carnivores), the red fox, leopard cat, Asian badger, and hog badger, partition their activity pattern to co-occur under varying human influences in the Taihang Mountains of China. Using camera-trapping data collected from 2016 to 2020, we revealed that the leopard cats and the badgers reduced their activities during the day at sites with high-level human disturbance, possibly a behavioral mechanism to avoid risks while living in human-dominated landscapes. However, the activity pattern overlap did not increase between mesocarnivore pairs, suggesting that they may use strategies other than niche segregation along the temporal dimension to coexist. ABSTRACT: Mesocarnivores play essential roles in terrestrial ecosystems, but anthropocentric disturbances have profoundly transformed their intraguild interactions worldwide. In this study, we explored how a guild of four mesocarnivores (red fox Vulpes vulpes, leopard cat Prionailurus bengalensis, Asian badger Meles leucurus, and hog badger Arctonyx collaris) partition their temporal niche in the temperate montane forests in North China under different human influences. We conducted a systemic camera-trapping survey on the study species in the central Taihang Mountains from 2016 to 2020. With an extensive survey effort of 111,063 camera-days from 187 camera stations, we obtained 10,035 independent detections of the four mesocarnivores and examined the activity patterns of each species under different levels of human disturbance and their overlaps. The results showed that, while the leopard cat and the badgers shifted their activity towards nocturnality, the red fox showed no significant change. The leopard cat’s degree of nocturnality varied between growing and non-growing seasons, likely a response to avoid humans and other competitors. However, the activity overlaps between species pairs demonstrated no statistically significant difference, indicating a long-developed coexistence mechanism that is homogenous across the landscape. Demonstrating how mesocarnivores shift activity patterns in response to human risks while partitioning resources, this study enhances our understanding of mesocarnivore behavioral changes and interspecific interactions at human–nature interfaces.