Scavenging on a pulsed resource: quality matters for corvids but density for mammals.

Background: Human food subsidies can provide predictable food sources in large quantities for wildlife species worldwide. In the boreal forest of Fennoscandia, gut piles from moose (Alces alces) harvest provide a potentially important food source for a range of opportunistically scavenging predators. Increased populations of predators can negatively affect threatened or important game species.

Variation in home range size of red foxes Vulpes vulpes along a gradient of productivity and human landscape alteration.

Home range size is a fundamental concept for understanding animal dispersion and ecological needs, and it is one of the most commonly reported ecological attributes of free-ranging mammals. Previous studies indicate that red foxes Vulpes vulpes display great variability in home range size. Yet, there has been little consensus regarding the reasons why home range sizes of red foxes vary so extensively.

Unstable dynamics and population limitation in mountain hares.

The regular large-scale population fluctuations that characterize many species of northern vertebrates have fascinated ecologists since the time of Charles Elton. There is still, however, no clear consensus on what drives these fluctuations. Throughout their circumpolar distribution, mountain hares Lepus timidus show regular and at times dramatic changes in density.