Life in the fast lane: learning from the rare multi-year recaptures of brown lemmings in the High Arctic
Inter-annual recaptures of Arctic lemmings are extremely rare because their life expectancy is very short, typically less than one year. On Bylot Island, Nunavut, Canada, we live-trapped in summer, marked and released brown lemmings (Lemmus trimucronatus Kerr 1792) between 2004 and 2016 and we perfo...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Other/Unknown Material |
| Language: | unknown |
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NRC Research Press (a division of Canadian Science Publishing)
2017
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1807/82469 http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/AS-2017-0017 |
| Summary: | Inter-annual recaptures of Arctic lemmings are extremely rare because their life expectancy is very short, typically less than one year. On Bylot Island, Nunavut, Canada, we live-trapped in summer, marked and released brown lemmings (Lemmus trimucronatus Kerr 1792) between 2004 and 2016 and we performed a large-scale, Before-After Control-Impact experiment from 2014 to 2016 to study effects of predator reduction on their population dynamics. Although inter-annual recaptures of marked lemmings were rare, our long-term study and predator reduction allowed us to capture 21 (1.4%; n = 1523) individuals over two consecutive years and one over three consecutive years. The inter-annual recapture rate was much higher in the predator-reduction grid (5.7%, n = 193) than in the other grids (0.7%, n = 425) during the experiment. Average distance moved between inter-annual recaptures was small (74 m). Our data thus demonstrate that lemmings are physiologically capable of living up to 24 months in the High Arctic, that predation is a major factor affecting lemming survival, including over winter, and that they show high site fidelity among years. The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author. |
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