Matinal

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Matinal is a term used in the life sciences, apparently only in entomology, where it describes an insect that is only or primarily active in the pre-dawn hours or early morning, and is most often used in literature on the natural history and ecology of bees. There are numerous genera and species of bees which exhibit this behavior, presumably to escape from competition for resources, and many flowers (e.g. squash and morning glory) have adapted to this particular pollination syndrome. In other scientific disciplines, this term is apparently rarely if ever used, but instead they use the more conventional and more generalized form of the term, which is "matutinal". (See also crepuscular.)

The etymology of the term is the latin word matutinum tempus (time of the morning)[citation needed].