bio

Temporal niche partitioning

Species dividing up the daily cycle instead of dividing up space, which makes time an axis of the niche as real as height in the canopy or depth in the soil. Two predators can hunt the same clearing, for the same prey, with the same technique, and never meet - provided one works while the other sleeps. From this comes the familiar vocabulary: diurnal, nocturnal, crepuscular for the specialists working the narrow margins at dawn and dusk, and cathemeral for the generalists who take work whenever it appears. Split the day in two and you have two forests to live in.