crepuscular

　砂漠に生息する猫についての記事です。

Rare footage of tiny, wide-eyed sand-cat kittens captured in Moroccan Sahara

Breton and his colleagues with the Sand Cat Sahara Research Team have been surveying these small, pale, lightly striped felids in southern Morocco since 2013, and their study has documented nearly 30 individual cats and collared 13. The work – up against the sand cat's camouflage, crepuscular/nocturnal habits, and all-around elusiveness – is shedding important light on the little-known species, which inhabits desert wilds in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.

That's an impressively large geography – from the dune seas of the Sahara to the Kyzylkum Desert of Uzbekistan – but within it the sand cat's known distribution is patchy. "It is not known whether the gaps in known range are due to a lack of records or truly reflect species absence," the International Union for Conservation of Nature notes in its profile on Felis margarita. (The sand cat's kinda awesome Latin name honours not a slushy tequila cocktail but the 19th-century French general Jean Auguste Margueritte).

一部抜粋

https://www.earthtouchnews.com/discoveries/discoveries/rare-footage-of-tiny-wide-eyed-sand-cat-kittens-captured-in-moroccan-sahara/

　crepuscular /krɪˈpʌskjʊlə, krɛˈpʌskjʊlə/ に注目しました。『ジーニアス英和辞典』（第五版，大修館）で引いたところ、「薄暗い，薄明りの」、「薄明活動性の」などと載っておりました。またOxford Dictionary of English (Second Edition) には、 “resembling or relating to twilight”と定義されております。動物学では “appearing or active in twilight”という意味で用いられます。文中のcrepuscular/nocturnalは、薄明活動性または夜行性と訳せるかと思います。
　ちなみに語源は “twilight”の意をもつラテン語のcrepusculumです。（Gomez）