Snow depth influences harvest of a boreal ungulate more than socio-economic factors: Implications for food security in a changing climate.

Climate change may affect the ability of hunters to harvest wildlife and, hence, threaten food security of local people. However, few studies have investigated the relative influence of environmental conditions on wildlife harvest rates. We harnessed a 24-year dataset of harvest dates for a boreal ungulate in a region where climate change is having pronounced impacts on snow depth, precipitation, and temperatures to investigate the effect of weather on harvest rates.

When death comes: linking predator-prey activity patterns to timing of mortality to understand predation risk.

The assumption that activity and foraging are risky for prey underlies many predator-prey theories and has led to the use of predator-prey activity overlap as a proxy of predation risk. However, the simultaneous measures of prey and predator activity along with timing of predation required to test this assumption have not been available. Here, we used accelerometry data on snowshoe hares () and Canada lynx () to determine activity patterns of prey and predators and match these to precise timing of predation.

Does coat colour influence survival? A test in a cyclic population of snowshoe hares.

Some mammal species inhabiting high-latitude biomes have evolved a seasonal moulting pattern that improves camouflage via white coats in winter and brown coats in summer. In many high-latitude and high-altitude areas, the duration and depth of snow cover has been substantially reduced in the last five decades. This reduction in depth and duration of snow cover may create a mismatch between coat colour and colour of the background environment, and potentially reduce the survival rate of species that depend on crypsis.

Coat color mismatch improves survival of a keystone boreal herbivore: Energetic advantages exceed lost camouflage.

Climate warming is causing asynchronies between animal phenology and environments. Mismatched traits, such as coat color change mismatched with snow, can decrease survival. However, coat change does not serve a singular adaptive benefit of camouflage, and alternate coat change functions may confer advantages that supersede mismatch costs.

Behavioural adjustments of predators and prey to wind speed in the boreal forest.

Wind speed can have multifaceted effects on organisms including altering thermoregulation, locomotion, and sensory reception. While forest cover can substantially reduce wind speed at ground level, it is not known if animals living in forests show any behavioural responses to changes in wind speed. Here, we explored how three boreal forest mammals, a predator and two prey, altered their behaviour in response to average daily wind speeds during winter.