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Documenting lemming population change in the Arctic: Can we detect trends?

  • Terrestrial Biodiversity in a Rapidly Changing Arctic
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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 11 October 2019

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Abstract

Lemmings are a key component of tundra food webs and changes in their dynamics can affect the whole ecosystem. We present a comprehensive overview of lemming monitoring and research activities, and assess recent trends in lemming abundance across the circumpolar Arctic. Since 2000, lemmings have been monitored at 49 sites of which 38 are still active. The sites were not evenly distributed with notably Russia and high Arctic Canada underrepresented. Abundance was monitored at all sites, but methods and levels of precision varied greatly. Other important attributes such as health, genetic diversity and potential drivers of population change, were often not monitored. There was no evidence that lemming populations were decreasing in general, although a negative trend was detected for low arctic populations sympatric with voles. To keep the pace of arctic change, we recommend maintaining long-term programmes while harmonizing methods, improving spatial coverage and integrating an ecosystem perspective.

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  • 11 October 2019

    In the original published article, some of the symbols in figure 1A were modified incorrectly during the typesetting and publication process. The correct version of the figure is provided in this correction

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Acknowledgements

Numerous funding agencies supported all the monitoring and research programmes included in this paper; they are listed in the appendix, and a large number of field workers were involved over the years in all sites. We thank Denver Holt for providing metadata for this study, and the Danish Environmental Protection Agency (NMS), the Norwegian Environmental Agency (DE), and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (GG) for supporting work with this review. We thank Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring programme for access to data. The findings and conclusions in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

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Correspondence to Dorothée Ehrich.

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The original version of this article was revised: Figure 1 was corrected.

Lead authors—Dorothée Ehrich, Niels M. Schmidt and Gilles Gauthier.

Dorothée Ehrich and Niels M. Schmidt share first authorship.

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Ehrich, D., Schmidt, N.M., Gauthier, G. et al. Documenting lemming population change in the Arctic: Can we detect trends?. Ambio 49, 786–800 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-019-01198-7

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