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Lemming winter habitat: the quest for warm and soft snow

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Abstract

During the cold arctic winter, small mammals like lemmings seek refuge inside the snowpack to keep warm and they dig tunnels in the basal snow layer, usually formed of a soft depth hoar, to find vegetation on which they feed. The snowpack, however, is a heterogenous medium and lemmings should use habitats where snow properties favor their survival and winter reproduction. We determined the impact of snow physical properties on lemming habitat use and reproduction in winter by sampling their winter nests for 13 years and snow properties for 6 years across 4 different habitats (mesic, riparian, shrubland, and wetland) on Bylot Island in the Canadian High Arctic. We found that lemmings use riparian habitat most intensively because snow accumulates more rapidly, the snowpack is the deepest and temperature of the basal snow layer is the highest in this habitat. However, in the deepest snowpacks, the basal depth hoar layer was denser and less developed than in habitats with shallower snowpacks, and those conditions were negatively related to lemming reproduction in winter. Shrubland appeared a habitat of moderate quality for lemmings as it favored a soft basal snow layer and a deep snowpack compared with mesic and wetland, but snow conditions in this habitat critically depend on weather conditions at the beginning of the winter. With climate change, a hardening of the basal layer of the snowpack and a delay in snow accumulation are expected, which could negatively affect the winter habitat of lemmings and be detrimental to their populations.

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Data availability

The lemming data analysed in this study are available from the NordicanaD repository (https://doi.org/10.5885/45400AW-9891BD76704C4CE2) and the other datasets are available from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Gabriel Bergeron, James Akpaleeapik, Madelaine Proulx, Qalaapik Enookolo, Jaimie Vincent and all the other people involved in the long-term monitoring of lemming winter nests in the field. We also thank Mathieu Barrère and Marianne Valcourt for their help with snow sampling. We thank Marie-Christine Cadieux for her precious help regarding database management. We thank Christophe Kinnard for sharing Reconyx data with us and Denis Sarrazin for his technical support with automated weather stations. We also thank David Bolduc for his help with the map in appendix.

Funding

This work was funded by Sentinel North program of the Canada First Research Excellence Fund, the Fonds de recherche du Québec—Nature et technologies, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Polar Continental Shelf Program of Natural Resources Canada, the ArcticNet Network of Centre of Excellence, the Fondation de l’Université Laval and the W. Garfield Weston Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre d’Études Nordiques, Université Laval, Pavillon Abitibi-Price, 2405, rue de la Terrasse, Québec, QC, Canada

    Mathilde Poirier, Gilles Gauthier, Florent Domine & Dominique Fauteux

  2. Department of Biology, Université Laval, 1045 av. de la Médecine, Québec, QC, Canada

    Mathilde Poirier & Gilles Gauthier

  3. Takuvik Joint International Laboratory, Université Laval (Canada) and CNRS-INSU (France), 1045 av. de la Médecine, Québec, QC, Canada

    Mathilde Poirier & Florent Domine

  4. Department of Chemistry, Université Laval, 1045 av. de la Médecine, Québec, QC, Canada

    Florent Domine

  5. Centre for Arctic Knowledge and Exploration, Canadian Museum of Nature, Station D, P.O. Box 3443, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Dominique Fauteux

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  1. Mathilde Poirier
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  2. Gilles Gauthier
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Contributions

MP, FD, DF conducted fieldwork. MP performed statistical analyses, with support from DF and GG. MP wrote the original manuscript draft with substantial contribution from GG, FD, DF. GG and FD co-supervised the project and obtained funding.

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Correspondence to Mathilde Poirier.

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Additional information

Communicated by Jean-François Le Galliard.

We documented the favorable role of deep snow in lemming habitat use, as well as its tradeoff as harder snow was found in deeper snowpack, which has a negative impact on lemming winter reproduction.

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Poirier, M., Gauthier, G., Domine, F. et al. Lemming winter habitat: the quest for warm and soft snow. Oecologia 202, 211–225 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-023-05385-y

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