| Summary: | Arctic ecosystems are changing dramatically with warmer and wetter conditions resulting in complex interactions between herbivores and their forage. We investigated how Svalbard reindeer ( Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus ) modify their late winter diets in response to long-term trends and interannual variation in forage availability and accessibility. By reconstructing their diets and foraging niches over a 17-year period (1995–2012) using serum δ 13 C and δ 15 N values, we found strong support for a temporal increase in the proportions of graminoids in the diets with a concurrent decline in the contributions of mosses. This dietary shift corresponds with graminoid abundance increases in the region and was associated with increases in population density, warmer summer temperatures and more frequent rain-on-snow (ROS) in winter. In addition, the variance in isotopic niche positions, breadths and overlaps also supported a temporal shift in the foraging niche and a dietary response to extreme ROS events. Our long-term study highlights the mechanisms by which winter and summer climate changes cascade through vegetation shifts and herbivore population dynamics to alter the foraging niche of Svalbard reindeer. Although i t has been anticipated that climate changes in the Svalbard region of the Arctic would be detrimental to this unique ungulate , our study suggests that environmental change is in a phase where conditions are improving for this subspecies at the northernmost edge of the Rangifer distribution. Microsoft Excel All analyses were done in R version 4.05. (R Core Team, 2021) in R Studio (version 1.4.1106). R-packages: simmr version 0.4.5 SIDER version 1.0.0.0 SIBER (Stable Isotope Bayesian Ellipses in R package) version 2.1.5 lme4 version 1.1–27.1 cAIC4 version 1.0 piecewiseSEM version 2.1.2 redres version 0.0.0.9 Funding provided by: National Science Foundation Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001 Award Number: Major Research Instrumentation award 0953271 Funding provided by: ...
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