Abstract: The present study investigated daily activity and time budgets of two Chinese turtles, Cuora mouhotii and C. galbinifrons, to test how the diurnal cycles of closely related species sharing the same environment were affected by interspecific competition. Instantaneous scan sampling was conducted at Diaoluoshan village, Diaoluo Nature Reserve, Hainan Island, China, from June to October 2015. The results showed that both species were diurnal, spent most of their time resting, and had limited movement and feeding time. For C. mouhotii, only one peak activity period was observed for both movement (06:00-07:00 AM) and feeding (10:00-11:00 AM). In contrast, C. galbinifrons exhibited one feeding peak (01:00-02:00 PM), but two peak periods for movement (09:00-10:00 AM and 05:00-06:00 PM). Moreover, C. galbinifrons spent considerably more time resting than C. mouhotii and less time moving and feeding. The coefficient of overlap was 0.78 for moving and 0.38 for feeding. These results indicate that although these two species live in the same distribution area, they can adopt suitable strategies for foraging and feeding in order to exploit food resources with minimal temporal overlap, which is advantageous to both species.

Key words: heat island prediction., normalization of temperature, landscape pattern, Xi’an City