Movements of Arctic Fox populations in the region of Baffin Bay and Smith Sound

• Published in: Polar Record
• Main Author: Elton, Charles
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1949
• Subjects: General Earth and Planetary Sciences; Ecology; Geography, Planning and Development; Arctic; Baffin Bay; Smith Sound; Alopex lagopus; Arctic Fox; Baffin; Polar Record; Smith sound
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247400044557; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0032247400044557

The Arctic Fox (Alopex lagopus and allied forms) is not only the chief furbearing animal in circumboreal regions, but also offers some fascinating ecological problems in its strong fluctuations in numbers, its extensive migrations, the diseases that appear periodically in its populations, and in the existence of two well-marked colour phases—the white and the “blue”—the relative abundance of which varies geographically in an extraordinary manner. Except in the U.S.S.R., comparatively little systematic study in the field has been made of this species by biologists, although it has been the object of several enquiries conducted through fur-trading and other organisations (of which the Canadian Arctic Wild Life Enquiry (Chitty and Chitty, 1941, 1945) is an example), and it has been observed in a scattered fashion by innumerable polarexpeditions.