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Four Ungulates Showed No Broad-scale Temporal or Habitat Partitioning in Wuyishan

Reeves's muntjac standing clearly in natural vegetation in China
Research · Ecology

Wild boar (Sus scrofa), mainland serow (Capricornis milneedwardsii), Reeves’s muntjac (Muntiacus reevesi) and tufted deer (Elaphodus cephalophus) showed little evidence of broad-scale temporal or spatial niche partitioning in Wuyishan National Park in southeastern China. Niche partitioning is the separation of shared ecological resources—for example by using different times or habitats—in ways that can reduce competition. Here, daily activity patterns overlapped from medium to high degrees, and the four species also showed similar broad habitat and elevation preferences.

The study used 494 camera traps and 25,436 independent records of the four ungulates. Researchers compared daily activity, elevation, broad habitat use and fine-scale combinations of space and time to test whether the species reduced overlap in ways that could limit competition.

At fine spatial and temporal scales, the raw data showed lower overlap and time lags of several days between records of different species at the same sites. Much of that pattern, however, was explained by differences in how abundant the species were. A rarer species will naturally leave longer gaps between camera records even if it is not actively avoiding another species. After accounting for this baseline effect, several species pairs showed a tendency to occur at similar sites at similar times rather than actively avoiding one another.

The authors interpret this pattern as evidence that shared favourable fine-scale conditions can outweigh the need for behavioural separation among these ungulates in Wuyishan. They note that information on diet, microhabitat and specific behaviours would be needed to resolve the coexistence mechanisms in greater detail.

Sources and image credit

  1. Fan, Y., Shen, Q., Zhang, Y., Zhou, X., Zheng, X., Mei, J., Wang, L., Chu, K., Cai, B., Ge, X., & Cui, P. (2026). Temporal and spatial niche partitioning of four sympatric ungulate species in Wuyishan National Park, China. Global Ecology and Conservation, 68, e04266. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2026.e04266Primary open-access research article published 27 May 2026. Using 25,436 independent records from 494 camera traps, the study found medium-to-high broad-scale temporal overlap and similar broad habitat/elevation preferences among wild boar, mainland serow, Reeves’s muntjac and tufted deer. Fine-scale spatiotemporal separation was largely driven by differences in abundance; after accounting for that background, several species showed a tendency toward aggregation.

Image: james_birdtourasia / iNaturalist / Wikimedia Commons — Reeves’s muntjac (Muntiacus reevesi) at Tangjia River, China, photographed 1 May 2013; representative image of one of the four ungulate species in the Wuyishan study, not a study animal · CC0 1.0 — https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ · Source

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