Diurnality is a form of plant and
animal behavior characterized by activity during
daytime
Daytime as observed on Earth is the period of the day during which a given location experiences natural illumination from direct sunlight. Daytime occurs when the Sun appears above the local horizon, that is, anywhere on the globe's he ...
, with a period of
sleeping
Sleep is a sedentary state of mind and body. It is characterized by altered consciousness, relatively inhibited Perception, sensory activity, reduced muscle activity and reduced interactions with surroundings. It is distinguished from wakefuln ...
or other inactivity at
night
Night (also described as night time, unconventionally spelled as "nite") is the period of ambient darkness from sunset
Sunset, also known as sundown, is the daily disappearance of the Sun below the horizon due to Earth's rotation. As view ...
. The common adjective used for daytime activity is "diurnal". The timing of activity by an animal depends on a variety of environmental factors such as the temperature, the ability to gather food by sight, the risk of predation, and the time of year. Diurnality is a cycle of activity within a 24-hour period; cyclic activities called
circadian rhythm
A circadian rhythm (), or circadian cycle, is a natural, internal process that regulates the sleep–wake cycle and repeats roughly every 24 hours. It can refer to any process that originates within an organism (i.e., endogenous) and responds to ...
s are endogenous cycles not dependent on external cues or environmental factors except for a
zeitgeber. Animals active during
twilight
Twilight is light produced by sunlight scattering in the upper atmosphere, when the Sun is below the horizon, which illuminates the lower atmosphere and the Earth's surface. The word twilight can also refer to the periods of time when this ...
are
crepuscular
In zoology, a crepuscular animal is one that is active primarily during the twilight period, being matutinal, vespertine, or both. This is distinguished from diurnal and nocturnal behavior, where an animal is active during the hours of dayli ...
, those active during the night are
nocturnal
Nocturnality is an ethology, animal behavior characterized by being active during the night and sleeping during the day. The common adjective is "nocturnal", versus diurnality, diurnal meaning the opposite.
Nocturnal creatures generally have ...
and animals active at sporadic times during both night and day are
cathemeral
Cathemerality, sometimes called metaturnality, is an organismal activity pattern of irregular intervals during the day or night in which food is acquired, socializing with other organisms occurs, and any other activities necessary for livelihood ar ...
.
Plants that open their flowers during the daytime are described as diurnal, while those that bloom during nighttime are nocturnal. The timing of flower opening is often related to the time at which preferred
pollinators are foraging. For example,
sunflowers open during the day to attract bees, whereas the
night-blooming cereus
Night-blooming cereus is the common name referring to a large number of flowering ceroid cacti that bloom at night. The flowers are short lived, and some of these species, such as '' Selenicereus grandiflorus'', bloom only once a year, for a ...
opens at night to attract large
sphinx moths.
In animals
Many types of animals are classified as being diurnal, meaning they are active during the day time and inactive or have periods of rest during the night time.
Commonly classified diurnal animals include
mammals,
bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...
s, and
reptiles.
Most primates are diurnal.
Scientifically classifying diurnality within animals can be a challenge, apart from the obvious increased activity levels during the day time light.
Evolution of diurnality
Initially, most animals were diurnal, but adaptations that allowed some animals to become nocturnal is what helped contribute to the success of many, especially mammals.
This evolutionary movement to nocturnality allowed them to better avoid predators and gain resources with less competition from other animals.
This did come with some adaptations that mammals live with today. Vision has been one of the most greatly affected senses from switching back and forth from diurnality to nocturnality, and this can be seen using biological and physiological analysis of rod nuclei from primate eyes.
This includes losing two of four
cone opsin
Animal opsins are G-protein-coupled receptors and a group of proteins made light-sensitive via a chromophore, typically retinal. When bound to retinal, opsins become Retinylidene proteins, but are usually still called opsins regardless. Most pro ...
s that assists in
colour vision, making many mammals
dichromats.
When early primates converted back to diurnality, better vision that included
trichromatic colour vision became very advantageous, making diurnality and colour vision adaptive traits of
simiiformes, which includes humans.
Studies using chromatin distribution analysis of rod nuclei from different simian eyes found that transitions between diurnality and nocturnality occurred several times within primate lineages, with switching to diurnality being the most common transitions.
Still today, diurnality seems to be reappearing in many lineages of other animals, including small rodent mammals like the Nile grass rat and golden mantle squirrel and reptiles.
More specifically, geckos, which were thought to be naturally nocturnal have shown many transitions to diurnality, with about 430 species of geckos now showing diurnal activity.
With so many diurnal species recorded, comparative analysis studies using newer lineages of gecko species have been done to study the evolution of diurnality. With about 20 transitions counted for the gecko lineages, it shows the significance of diurnality.
Strong environmental influences like climate change, predation risk, and competition for resources are all contributing factors.
Using the example of geckos, it is thought that species like ''
Mediodactylus amictopholis
The Lebanese thin-toed gecko (''Mediodactylus amictopholis'') is a species of lizard in the family Gekkonidae.
It is found in Lebanon, Syria and Israel.
Its natural habitat is elevated rocky areas.
It is threatened by habitat loss
Habitat ...
'' that live at higher altitudes have switched to diurnality to help gain more heat through the day, and therefore conserve more energy, especially when colder seasonal temperatures hit.
Light
Light is one of the most defining environmental factors that determines an animal's activity pattern.
Photoperiod or a light dark cycle is determined by the geographical location, with day time being associated with much ambient light, and night time being associated with little ambient light.
Light is one of the strongest influences of the
suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) which is part of the
hypothalamus
The hypothalamus () is a part of the brain that contains a number of small nuclei with a variety of functions. One of the most important functions is to link the nervous system to the endocrine system via the pituitary gland. The hypothalamus ...
in the brain that controls the circadian rhythm in most animals. This is what determines whether an animal is diurnal or not.
The SCN uses visual information like light to start a cascade of hormones that are released and work on many physiological and behavioural functions.
Light can produce powerful masking effects on an animal's circadian rhythm, meaning that it can "mask" or influence the internal clock, changing the activity patterns of an animal, either temporarily or over the long term if exposed to enough light over a long period of time.
Masking can be referred to either as positive masking or negative masking, with it either increasing an diurnal animals activity or decreasing a nocturnal animal's activity, respectively.
This can be depicted when exposing different types of rodents to the same photoperiods. When a diurnal Nile grass rat and nocturnal mouse are exposed to the same photoperiod and light intensity, increased activity occurred within the grass rat (positive masking), and decreased activity within the mouse (negative masking).
Even small amounts of environmental light change have shown to have an effect on the activity of mammals. An observational study done on the activity of nocturnal owl monkeys in the
Gran Chaco in South America showed that increased amounts of moonlight at night increased their activity levels through the night which led to a decrease of daytime activity.
Meaning that for this species, ambient moonlight is negatively correlated with diurnal activity.
This is also connected with the foraging behaviours of the monkeys, as when there were nights of little to no moonlight, it affected the monkey's ability to forage efficiently, so they were forced to be more active in the day to find food.
Other environmental influences
Diurnality has shown to be an evolutionary trait in many animal species, with diurnality mostly reappearing in many lineages. Other environmental factors like ambient temperature, food availability, and predation risk can all influence whether an animal will evolve to be diurnal, or if their effects are strong enough, then mask over their circadian rhythm, changing their activity patterns to becoming diurnal.
All three factors often involve one another, and animals need to be able to find a balance between them if they are to survive and thrive.
Ambient temperature has been shown to affect and even convert nocturnal animals to diurnality as it is a way for them to conserve metabolic energy.
Nocturnal animals are often energetically challenged due to being most active in the nighttime when ambient temperatures are lower than through the day, and so they lose a lot of energy in the form of body heat.
According to the circadian thermos-energetics (CTE) hypothesis, animals that are expending more energy than they are taking in (through food and sleep) will be more active in the light cycle, meaning they will be more active in the day.
This has been shown in studies done on small nocturnal mice in a laboratory setting. When they were placed under a combination of enough cold and hunger stress, they converted to diurnality through temporal niche switching, which was expected.
Another similar study that involved energetically challenging small mammals showed that diurnality is most beneficial when the animal has a sheltered location to rest in, reducing heat loss.
Both studies concluded that nocturnal mammals do change their activity patterns to be more diurnal when energetically stressed (due to heat loss and limited food availability), but only when predation is also limited, meaning the risks of predation are less than the risk of freezing or starving to death.
In plants
Many plants are diurnal or nocturnal, depending on the time period when the most effective pollinators, i.e., insects, visit the plant. Most angiosperm plants are visited by various insects, so the flower adapts its
phenology
Phenology is the study of periodic events in biological life cycles and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate, as well as habitat factors (such as elevation).
Examples include the date of emergence of leav ...
to the most effective pollinators. Thus, the effectiveness of relative diurnal or nocturnal species of insects affects the diurnal or nocturnal nature of the plants they pollinate, causing in some instances an adjustment of the opening and closing cycles of the plants. For example, the
baobab
''Adansonia'' is a genus made up of eight species of medium-to-large deciduous trees known as baobabs ( or ). They are placed in the Malvaceae family, subfamily Bombacoideae. They are native to Madagascar, mainland Africa, and Australia.Trop ...
is pollinated by fruit bats and starts blooming in late afternoon; the flowers are dead within twenty-four hours.
In technology operations
Services that alternate between high and low utilization in a daily cycle are described as being diurnal. Many websites have the most users during the day and little utilization at night, or vice versa. Operations planners can use this cycle to plan, for example, maintenance that needs to be done when there are fewer users on the web site.
See also
*
Diurnal Cycle
*
Crypsis
*
Nocturnality
Nocturnality is an animal behavior characterized by being active during the night and sleeping during the day. The common adjective is "nocturnal", versus diurnal meaning the opposite.
Nocturnal creatures generally have highly developed sen ...
*
Crepuscular
In zoology, a crepuscular animal is one that is active primarily during the twilight period, being matutinal, vespertine, or both. This is distinguished from diurnal and nocturnal behavior, where an animal is active during the hours of dayli ...
*
Cathemeral
Cathemerality, sometimes called metaturnality, is an organismal activity pattern of irregular intervals during the day or night in which food is acquired, socializing with other organisms occurs, and any other activities necessary for livelihood ar ...
References
{{Light Ethology
Ethology
Circadian rhythm
Day