Camera-Trap Assessment of Terrestrial Mammals and Ground-Dwelling Birds in the Zhangjiajie Chinese Giant Salamander National Nature Reserve, China

Baseline information on terrestrial wildlife communities and their activity patterns is essential for protected-area management, but such information remains limited for Hunan Zhangjiajie Giant Salamander National Nature Reserve, where conservation attention has historically focused on the Chinese giant salamander and associated aquatic ecosystems. From March 2024 to August 2025, we conducted a camera-trap survey in broad-leaved and coniferous forest habitats of the reserve to document terrestrial mammals and ground-dwelling birds, evaluate taxonomic completeness, and describe diel and seasonal activity patterns. Across 43 camera-trap stations and 16,314 effective camera-trap days, we recorded 59 wildlife species, including 18 mammals and 41 ground-dwelling birds. The assemblage included nationally protected, threatened, and Chinese endemic species, indicating that the reserve’s forest habitats support important terrestrial biodiversity in addition to its aquatic conservation target. Taxonomic completeness curves suggested that the current survey captured most camera-detectable mammal and ground-dwelling bird taxa under the present sampling design, although the results should not be interpreted as a complete inventory of the reserve’s total vertebrate diversity. Annual diel activity analysis of 11 focal species showed clear temporal differentiation among ecological groups: small and medium-sized carnivores were mainly nocturnal, ground-dwelling birds, and red-hipped squirrel were primarily diurnal, and ungulates showed mixed or crepuscular-to-nocturnal tendencies. Seasonal analyses based on bioclimatic periods showed interspecific differences in activity-density distributions between the cool-dry and warm-wet seasons. However, peak-shift reliability analysis indicated that most focal species retained broadly similar main activity peaks across seasons; masked palm civet was the only species showing reliable seasonal displacement of its main activity peak. Pairwise temporal overlap analyses described temporal co-occurrence patterns among selected sympatric species but should not be interpreted as evidence of direct interaction or niche differentiation. Overall, this study provides baseline data on camera-detected terrestrial vertebrates in the reserve and supports long-term monitoring, forest habitat management, and disturbance control for terrestrial mammals and ground-dwelling birds.