temporal division of the ecological niche). Advantages Resource competition The honey badger, a nocturnal animal.īeing active at night is a form of niche differentiation, where a species' niche is partitioned not by the amount of resources but by the amount of time (i.e. A larger cornea and pupil correlated well with whether these two classes of organisms were nocturnal or not. While most mammals did not exhibit the morphological characteristics expected of a nocturnal creature, reptiles and birds fit in perfectly. The anomaly to this theory were anthropoids, who appeared to have the most divergence from nocturnality than all organisms examined. They indicated that olfactory bulbs were much larger in comparison to their optic lobes, indicating they both have a common ancestor who evolved to function as a nocturnal species, decreasing their eyesight in favor of a better sense of smell. In a recent study, recently extinct elephant birds and modern day nocturnal kiwi bird skulls were examined to recreate their likely brain and skull formation. The leading answer is that the high visual acuity that comes with diurnal characteristics is not needed anymore due to the evolution of compensatory sensory systems, such as a heightened sense of smell and more astute auditory systems. A recent study attempts to answer the question as to why so many modern day mammals retain these nocturnal characteristics even though they are not active at night. While it is difficult to say which came first, nocturnality or diurnality, a hypothesis in evolutionary biology, the nocturnal bottleneck theory, postulates that in the Mesozoic, many ancestors of modern-day mammals evolved nocturnal characteristics in order to avoid contact with the numerous diurnal predators. Origins The kiwi is a family of nocturnal birds endemic to New Zealand. Cathemeral species, such as fossas and lions, are active both in the day and at night. Crepuscular species, such as rabbits, skunks, tigers and hyenas, are often erroneously referred to as nocturnal. Nocturnality helps wasps, such as Apoica flavissima, avoid hunting in intense sunlight.ĭiurnal animals, including humans (except for night owls), squirrels and songbirds, are active during the daytime. More specifically, they have been found to have a larger cornea relative to their eye size than diurnal creatures to increase their visual sensitivity: in the low-light conditions. Many nocturnal creatures including tarsiers and some owls have large eyes in comparison with their body size to compensate for the lower light levels at night. Others, such as bushbabies and (some) bats, can function only at night. Some animals, such as cats and ferrets, have eyes that can adapt to both low-level and bright day levels of illumination (see metaturnal). Nocturnal creatures generally have highly developed senses of hearing, smell, and specially adapted eyesight. The common adjective is " nocturnal", versus diurnal meaning the opposite. Nocturnality is a behavior in some non-human animals characterized by being active during the night and sleeping during the day. These antonyms of the word nocturnal are provided for information only.Look up nocturnal in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. is more than 70,800 synonyms and 47,200 antonyms available. This site allows you to find in one place, all the synonyms and antonyms of the English language. In your daily life, for writing an email, a text, an essay, if you want to avoid repetitions or find the opposite meaning of a word. The words blockage, encumbrance, handicap are antonyms for "help". The words acknowledge, enjoy, welcome are synonyms for "appreciate". Antonyms are used to express the opposite of a word. Antonym definitionĪn antonym is a word, adjective, verb or expression whose meaning is opposite to that of a word. This avoids repetitions in a sentence without changing its meaning. Synonyms are other words that mean the same thing. A synonym is a word, adjective, verb or expression that has the same meaning as another, or almost the same meaning.
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