Instability of the snowshoe hare and woody plant interaction

Summary

We show that Alaskan woody plants respond to browsing in two ways that might destabilize a plantherbivore interaction and account for snowshoe hare population ‘cycles’. (1) Browse production of preferred, earliersuccessional woody plants increases in response to moderate levels of browsing. Such yield increases are potentially destabilizing. Later successional woody plants show decreases in yield after moderate browsing, which is consistent with the persistence of snowshoe hares in late successional ‘refuge’ habitats (Keith 1966, Wolff 1980). (2) Many woody plants are destructively overbrowsed or girdled at the peak of the snowshoe hare cycle. The more palatable and plastic, early to mid successional plants respond by sprouting accompanied by juvenile reversion. Sprouts are markedly less palatable than mature shoots. We show here that sprout palatability and twig biomass are restored in 2–3 years for earlier successional plants, but palatability may not recover for 4–10 years in sprouts of some mid to late successional plants. The decrease in palatability helps to account for the snowshoe hare ‘crash’ (assuming that damage to more palatable plants is widespread during the ‘peak’), and the 2–3 year time lag for recovery of more palatable species could account for (May 1974) the observed 8–11 year period of the hare cycles. Browse yield increases acting during the snowshoe hare population nadir and increase, and sprouting with juvenile reversion acting during the hare peak and decline can in principle account for the oscillatory nature and the observed 8–11 year periodicity of the snowshoe hare cycle.