When animals are out and about C. E.

Diurnal Organisms Activity during the day Sleeping or inactivity at night Ex: Squirrels, elephants, gorillas, birds of prey

Nocturnal Organisms Activity at night Sleeping or inactivity during the day Ex: mice, bats, owls, opposums

How mice “see” at night Most likely evolved as an avoidance response to predation pressure or birds of prey (diurnal) Obtain sensory information through specialized whiskers on their snout Deflection of whisker triggers sequential activity in the trigeminal ganglion, trigeminal brain stem, somatosensory thalamus and primary somatosensory neocortex The cortical representation of each whisker can be recognized by anatomically defined ‘barrels’ Arranged in cortex identically to the layout of the whiskers on the snout of the rodent Allows the response of synaptic circuits to be studied within context of well- defined stereotypical anatomical map

Crepuscular Active during twilight (dusk or dawn) Often erroneously referred to as nocturnal Those that are active during both morning and evening twilight are said to have a bimodal activity pattern Ex: Ocelots, lynx, black-tailed jackrabbit

Matutinal Animals active only before sunrise Ex: bees, gerbils,

Vespertine Animals active only after sunset Ex: insects such as moths (moon-moth) and flies and species of bats and owls that feed on these insects

Cathemerality/Metaturnality sporadic and irregular intervals of activity during the day or night Neither diurnal or nocturnal Word is composed of two Greek terms Kata-means through Hamera-means day Ex: specific primates, specific lemurs, river otters In lemurs, this may be to regulate their temperature or to avoid predation

Resources https://animalsake.com/examples-of-crepuscular-animals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathemerality http://dragonflyissuesinevolution13.wikia.com/wiki/Cathemerality https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and- molecular-biology/nocturnal-animal