Arctic lemmings, Lemmus spp. and Dicrostonyx spp.: integrating ecological and evolutionary perspectives

• Main Authors: Tarja Oksanen, Lauri Oksanen, Jonas Dahlgren, Johan Olofsson
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.477.19; http://www.sysecol2.ethz.ch/Refs/EntClim/O/Ok007.pdf

Question: What do the evolution and the fluctuation patterns of arctic lemmings – Lemmus spp. and Dicrostonyx spp. – tell us about their population dynamics and the influence of lemmings on the ecology and evolution of arctic plants? Methods: We reviewed the literature concerning the evolution of arctic lemmings and analysed their current fluctuation patterns with a focus on the following aspects: (1) changes in morphology related to feeding ecology; (2) per capita rate of population growth during the year preceding the peak (rp), predicted to be high for arvicoline rodents interacting with the winter forage plants and low for arvicoline rodents interacting with specialized predators; (3) the skew of logarithmically transformed density data (skd), predicted to be zero for arvicolines interacting with their winter forage plants, negative for arvicolines interacting with specialized predators, and positive for arvicolines interacting with both seasonally renewed and depletable winter forage plants (the ‘Barrow model ’ of Turchin and Batzli, 2001). Moreover, we conducted spectral analysis of those density records, which were at least 15 years long. Here predator– arvicoline models predict that similar spectral density profiles, with statistically significant