Comparative response of Rangifer tarandus and other northern ungulates to climatic variability

By R. Weladji, D. Klein, Ø. Holand, A. Mysterud. 2002

94 citations recorded by the source corpus.

To understand the factors influencing life history traits and population dynamics, attention is increasingly being given to the importance of environmental stochasticity. In this paper, we review and discuss aspects of current knowledge concerning the effect of climatic variation (local and global) on population parameters of northern ungu¬lates, with special emphasis on reindeer/caribou (Rangifer tarandus). We also restrict ourselves to indirect effects of climate through both forage availability and quality, and insect activity. Various authors have used different weather variables; with sometime opposite trends in resulting life history traits of ungulates, and few studies show consistent effects to the same climatic variables. There is thus little consensus about which weather variables play the most sig¬nificant role influencing ungulate population parameters. This may be because the effects of weather on ungulate pop¬ulation dynamics and life history traits are scale dependent and it is difficult to isolate climatic effects from density dependent factors. This confirms the complexity of the relationship between environment and ecosystem. We point out limits of comparability between systems and the difficulty of generalizing about the effect of climate change broadly across northern systems, across species and even within species. Furthermore, insect harassment appears to be a key climate-related factor for the ecology of reindeer/caribou that has been overlooked in the literature of climatic effects on large herbivores. In light of this, there is a need for further studies of long time series in assessing effects of climate variability on reindeer/caribou.

Subfields: Ecology, General Health Professions, Small Animals

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/dbd6b8023a13a8ddeb71275db01100859e763b16

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Citations in the corpus

Variation in Calf Body Mass in Migratory Caribou: The Role of Habitat, Climate, and Movements (2009, background): “In addition to local climate effects (Putman et al. 1996; Weladji et al. 2002), ecological effects of large-scale climatic modes such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO— Hurrell 1995) have recently been described (Forchhammer and Post 2004; Weladji et al. 2002).”
Observed and predicted effects of climate change on Arctic caribou and reindeer (2018, methodology): “Previous work has reviewed some specific aspects of climate 82 change and Rangifer (Heggberget et al. 2002; Weladji et al. 2002; Moen 2008; Joly et al. 83 2009; Tyler 2010), or discussed climate change among other threats to Rangifer (Vors 84 and Boyce 2009; Festa-Bianchet et al. 2011), and our…”
Empirical Evidence of Density- Dependence in Populations of Large Herbivores (2009, background): “D. Interaction Between Climate and Density Weather has well documented effects on demographic rates of large herbi- vores and on vertebrates in general (Mysterud et al., 2003; Sæther, 1997; Weladji et al., 2002).”
Using a proxy of plant productivity (NDVI) to find key periods for animal performance: the case of roe deer (2006, unknown): “Indeed, an ongoing discussion among ecologists working on northern ungulates focuses on the relative importance of winter versus summer conditions in determining deer performances (Sæther 1997, Weladji et al. 2002).”
Regulation of animal size by eNPP, Bergmann's rule, and related phenomena (2011, background): “…conclude that altitudinal range affects body size because elk can track the altitudinal progression of the pulse of high eNPP and thus take advantage of emerging (highly nutritious) forage for a longer period of time (see Reimers et al. 1983, Weladji et al. 2002 for similar examples with caribou).”