When death comes: Linking predator-prey activity patterns to timing of mortality to understand predation risk

Surprisingly, we found that lynx kills of hares were as likely to occur during the day when hares were inactive as at night when hares were active. We also found that activity rates of hares were not related to the chance of predation at daily and weekly scales, whereas lynx activity rates positively affected the diel pattern of lynx predation on hares and their weekly kill rates of hares. Our findings suggest that predator-prey diel activity overlap may not always be a good proxy of predation risk, and highlight a need for examining the link between predation and spatiotemporal behavior of predator and prey to improve our understanding of how predator-prey behavioral interactions drive predation risk.