ReviewProceedings. Biological sciences2011
Of lemmings and snowshoe hares: the ecology of northern Canada.
Review in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 44 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
44 citing papers in PubMed, 198 citations in OpenAlex.
- A Historical Review of Our Knowledge of Brown Lemming Population Cycles at Barrow, Alaska: Cycles No More or Never Before.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Review
- Diel Niche of Sympatric Small Mammals Revealed by Year-Round Camera Trapping.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Influence of habitat on fine-scale space use by brown lemmings (Journal of mammalogy · 2024Article
- Review
- Does coat colour influence survival? A test in a cyclic population of snowshoe hares.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Seven decades of southern range dynamics of Canada lynx.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- A nomadic avian predator displays flexibility in prey choice during episodic outbreaks of rodents in arid Australia.Oecologia · 2021Article
- Long-term patterns in winter habitat selection, breeding and predation in a density-fluctuating, high Arctic lemming population.Oecologia · 2021Article
- Population cycles and outbreaks of small rodents: ten essential questions we still need to solve.Oecologia · 2021Review
- Impacts of predator-mediated interactions along a climatic gradient on the population dynamics of an alpine bird.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Seasonal food webs with migrations: multi-season models reveal indirect species interactions in the Canadian Arctic tundra.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2020Article
- Article
- Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul: managing threatened predators of endangered and declining prey species.PeerJ · 2019Article
- The effects of food level and social density on reproduction in the Least Killifish,Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
- Seasonal difference in temporal transferability of an ecological model: near-term predictions of lemming outbreak abundances.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Transferability of biotic interactions: Temporal consistency of arctic plant-rodent relationships is poor.Ecology and evolution · 2018Article
- High Arctic lemmings remain reproductively active under predator-induced elevated stress.Oecologia · 2018Article
- Weather-driven change in primary productivity explains variation in the amplitude of two herbivore population cycles in a boreal system.Oecologia · 2018Article
- Bottom-up processes drive reproductive success in an apex predator.Ecology and evolution · 2018Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Two population oscillations dominate terrestrial community dynamics in northern Canada. In the boreal forest, the snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) fluctuates in cycles with an 8-10 year periodicity and in tundra regions lemmings typically fluctuate in cycles with a 3-4 year periodicity. I review 60 years of research that has uncovered many of the causes of these population cycles, outline areas of controversy that remain and suggest key questions to address. Lemmings are keystone herbivores in tundra ecosystems because they are a key food resource for many avian and mammalian predators and are a major consumer of plant production. There remains much controversy over the role of predation, food shortage and social interactions in causing lemming cycles. Predation is well documented as a significant mortality factor limiting numbers. Food shortage is less likely to be a major limiting factor on population growth in lemmings. Social interactions might play a critical role in reducing the rate of population growth as lemming density rises. Snowshoe hares across the boreal forest are a key food for many predators and their cycles have been the subject of large-scale field experiments that have pinpointed predation as the key limiting factor causing these fluctuations. Predators kill hares directly and indirectly stress them by unsuccessful pursuits. Stress reduces the reproductive rate of female hares and is transmitted to their offspring who also suffer reduced reproductive rates. The maternal effects produced by predation risk induce a time lag in the response of hare reproductive rate to density, aiding the cyclic dynamics.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.