Going beyond ‘predation’ and ‘survival’: The importance of demographic changes for understanding snowshoe hare cycles

作者：Marlène Gamelon, Nigel G. Yoccoz · 发表于：Journal of Animal Ecology · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1111/1365-2656.70167 · 被引用次数：4 · 研究领域：Wildlife Ecology and Conservation、Animal Ecology and Behavior Studies、Ecology and biodiversity studies

Research Highlight: Oli, M., Kenney, A., Boonstra, R., Boutin, S., Murray, D., Jung, T., Hines, J., Krebs, C. (2026). Demographic mechanisms of snowshoe hare population cycles in Yukon, Canada. Journal of Animal Ecology. https://doi.org.10.1111/1365-2656.70169. Ecologists have long been intrigued by cycles in population abundances characterizing the dynamics of some wild species. Abundance may follow surprisingly regular cycles, with an increase phase, a peak phase and then a decline phase of more or less the same length. Predator-induced mortality has long been proposed as the main demographic mechanism inducing population cycles, leading most of cycle theory to consider that population cycles result from survival changes only. In this paper, Oli et al. (2025) assessed how the cycles in population abundance of the snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) in Yukon, observed during 43 years, are driven by survival or reproductive rates of some specific age classes and how their contributions differ according to the cyclic phase. Thanks to the individual monitoring of more than 7000 snowshoe hares and a state-of-the-art capture-mark-recapture modelling framework, they showed different contributions of age-specific vital rates to the population growth rate, depending on the cyclic phase (increase, peak, decline and low phases) and the breeding period considered (early, mid, late and non-breeding periods). For instance, improved breeding probability, litter size and pre-weaning survival ...