Canine circovirus (CanineCV) is a relatively new viral species, belonging to the family <i>Circoviridae</i>, whose pathogenic role is still uncertain. Since its first description in one domestic dog in 2011 from the USA, several reports have been documenting its distribution worldwide. Recently, CanineCV was also detected in wild animals such as wolves, foxes and badgers. In order to investigate the ...

Ptarmigan are herbivorous birds that are year-round residents of alpine and arctic ecosystems — presently subjected to the most rapid climate warming on earth. Yet, compared to other bird taxa there has been little climate impact research on ptarmigan. Ptarmigan population dynamics, in particular in the sub/low-arctic, appears to be strongly influenced by complex interactions with a suite of ...

Ecologists are still puzzled by the diverse population dynamics of herbivorous small mammals that range from high-amplitude, multiannual cycles to stable dynamics. Theory predicts that this diversity results from combinations of climatic seasonality, weather stochasticity, and density-dependent food web interactions. The almost ubiquitous 3- to 5-y cycles in boreal and arctic climates may theoretically ...

Climate change has different and sometimes divergent effects on terrestrial and marine food webs, and in coastal ecosystems, these effects are tightly interlinked. Responses of opportunistic coastal predators and scavengers to climate change may thus be complex and potentially highly flexible, and can simultaneously serve as indicators of, and have profound impacts on, lower trophic levels. Gaining ...

For more than five decades, research has been conducted at Ny-Ålesund, in Svalbard, Norway, to understand the structure and functioning of High-Arctic ecosystems and the profound impacts on them of environmental change. Terrestrial, freshwater, glacial and marine ecosystems are accessible year-round from Ny-Ålesund, providing unique opportunities for interdisciplinary observational and experimental ...

Among many unknown aspects of the Svalbard rock ptarmigan’s biology is whether the birds migrate seasonally within the Svalbard archipelago. Visual observations in spring and fall have indicated that they could perform long-range migration, a behaviour that would allow them to track seasonal shifts in suitable feeding areas. However, the movement patterns and habitat use of the Svalbard rock ...

Tissue-specific stable isotope signatures can provide insights into the trophic ecology of consumers and their roles in food webs. Two parameters are central for making valid inferences based on stable isotopes, isotopic discrimination (difference in isotopic ratio between consumer and its diet) and turnover time (renewal process of molecules in a given tissue usually measured when half of the tissue ...

We investigated if dietary exposure to persistent organic pollutants (POPs) affect mandibular asymmetry and periodontal disease in paired male-siblings of Arctic foxes (<i>Vulpes lagopus</i>). During ontogeny, one group of siblings was exposed to the complexed POP mixture in naturally contaminated minke whale (<i>Balaenoptere acutorostarta</i>) blubber (n = 10), while another group was given wet ...

Here, we report from the first direct observation of a red fox (Vulpes vulpes) intrusion on an arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) breeding den from the southern Arctic tundra of Yamal Peninsula, Russia in 2007. At the same time, as a current range retraction of the original inhabitant of the circumpolar tundra zone the arctic fox is going on, the red fox is expanding their range from the south into arctic ...

This screening project has focused on the occurrence of conventional andemerging PFASs in terrestrial and marine environments, including the Arctic. Conventional PFASs were found to be wide-spread in the environment and for the first time in Norway reported in wolf, a top predator from the terrestrial environment.Otters living in close proximity to human settlements and preying on the marine food ...