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Demographic responses to a mild winter in enclosed vole populations

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Population Ecology

Abstract

Mild winter weather causing snow to melt and ice to accumulate on the ground has been proposed to cause the decreased survival of individuals, and less pronounced cyclicity, of small rodent populations in Fennoscandia. However, detailed data linking ice accumulation to decreased winter survival is lacking. We live-trapped and monitored with passive integrated transponders enclosed populations of root voles (Microtus oeconomus) exposed to different amounts of ice accumulation through a mild winter. We studied how social behaviour and survival responded to snow melt and ice accumulation. Voles avoided ground ice by moving their home ranges, thus increasing home range overlap in enclosed populations experiencing more extensive ice cover. Winter survival was not affected by the amount of ice accumulation, and was only slightly reduced during ice formation in early winter. The lowest survival rates were found at the onset of snow melt in early spring. These results suggest that ice accumulation does not cause lower survival during mild winters, probably because plastic social behaviour enables root voles to reduce the negative effects of varying winter weather on survival. The mechanisms for lower survival during mild winters may operate during spring and be related to spring floods or increased susceptibility to predators.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported financially by the Department of Biology, University of Oslo, Norway. We are grateful for the assistance from F. Dufour, D. Mersch and B. Decenciere during field work at Evenstad Research Station. Harald Steen and Erkki Korpimäki kindly commented on earlier versions of the manuscript, and we also thank Xavier Lambin and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments that helped to improve this manuscript. This project was funded by a grant from the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission (Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship FP6-501658) to J.-F.L.G.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Program for Experimental Behavioral and Population Ecological Research, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1066, Blindern, 0316, Oslo, Norway

    Katrine S. Hoset

  2. Section of Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Turku, 20014, Turku, Finland

    Katrine S. Hoset

  3. Department of Biology, Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1066, Blindern, 0316, Oslo, Norway

    Jean-François Le Galliard & Gry Gundersen

  4. Laboratoire Fonctionnement et évolution des systèmes écologiques, CNRS UMR 7625, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Case 237, 7 Quai St Bernard, 75005, Paris, France

    Jean-François Le Galliard

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  1. Katrine S. Hoset
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Correspondence to Katrine S. Hoset.

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Hoset, K.S., Le Galliard, JF. & Gundersen, G. Demographic responses to a mild winter in enclosed vole populations. Popul Ecol 51, 279–288 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10144-008-0130-4

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