Effects of Anthropogenic Disturbance on Mammal Community Diversity and Activity Patterns: Evidence from the Jinfoshan and Jinyunshan National Nature Reserves, China.

Anthropogenic disturbance can reshape mammal communities through both long-term habitat modification and short-term direct human presence, yet these disturbance dimensions are often conflated. Using three consecutive years (2017-2019) of camera-trap data from two subtropical forest reserves in Chongqing, China (Jinfoshan and Jinyunshan), we evaluated the differential effects of human modification (HM) and human activity (HA) on mammal taxonomic diversity, functional diversity (MNTD and SES.MNTD), and diel activity patterns. HM and HA were not significantly correlated, indicating that they represent largely independent disturbance components in this system. Regression analyses showed that HM was significantly associated with reduced Shannon-Wiener diversity, while HA primarily influenced community evenness with a non-linear response (initial increase followed by decline at higher disturbance). In contrast, functional diversity metrics (MNTD and SES.MNTD) did not exhibit significant relationships with either HM or HA across the observed gradients, suggesting relative stability of trait dispersion at the community level. Activity analyses revealed guild-specific behavioral strategies: herbivores retained a predominantly crepuscular pattern but reduced activity during periods of high human presence, whereas omnivores displayed stronger temporal niche partitioning, becoming more nocturnal under higher disturbance intensity, particularly in Jinyunshan. Together, these results demonstrate that distinct disturbance types can affect mammal communities through different pathways and that integrating multidimensional diversity metrics with behavioral analyses can improve conservation planning in human-dominated landscapes.