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From arctic lemmings to adaptive dynamics: Charles Elton's legacy in population ecology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2001

JAN LINDSTRÖM ,
ESA RANTA ,
HANNA KOKKO ,
PER LUNDBERG  and
VEIJO KAITALA
JAN LINDSTRÖM
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EJ, UK Present address: Institute of Biomedical and Life Sciences, Division of Environmental & Evolutionary Biology, University of Glasgow, Graham Kerr Building, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK. Tel: +44 (0)141 3302520; Fax: +44 (0)141 3302536; e-mail: j.lindstrom@bio.gla.ac.uk
ESA RANTA
Affiliation:
Integrative Ecology Unit, Department of Ecology and Systematics, Division of Population Biology, P.O. Box 17, FIN – 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
HANNA KOKKO
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EJ, UK
PER LUNDBERG
Affiliation:
Department of Theoretical Ecology, Ecology Building, Lund University, SE – 22362, Lund, Sweden
VEIJO KAITALA
Affiliation:
Integrative Ecology Unit, Department of Ecology and Systematics, Division of Population Biology, P.O. Box 17, FIN – 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland Department of Biological and Environmental Science, P.O. Box 35, FIN – 40351 University of Jyväskylä, Finland
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Abstract

We shall examine the impact of Charles S. Elton's 1924 article on periodic fluctuations in animal populations on the development of modern population ecology. We argue that his impact has been substantial and that during the past 75 years of research on multi-annual periodic fluctuations in numbers of voles, lemmings, hares, lynx and game animals he has contributed much to the contemporary understanding of the causes and consequences of population regulation. Elton was convinced that the cause of the regular fluctuations was climatic variation. To support this conclusion, he examined long-term population data then available. Despite his firm belief in a climatic cause of the self-repeating periodic dynamics which many species display, Elton was insightful and far-sighted enough to outline many of the other hypotheses since put forward as an explanation for the enigmatic long-term dynamics of some animal populations. An interesting, but largely neglected aspect in Elton's paper is that it ends with speculation regarding the evolutionary consequences of periodic population fluctuations. The modern understanding of these issues will also be scrutinised here. In population ecology, Elton's 1924 paper has spawned a whole industry of research on populations displaying multi-annual periodicity. Despite the efforts of numerous research teams and individuals focusing on the origins of multi-annual population cycles, and despite the early availability of different explanatory hypotheses, we are still lacking rigorous tests of some of these hypotheses and, consequently, a consensus of the causes of periodic fluctuations in animal populations. Although Elton would have been happy to see so much effort spent on cyclic populations, we also argue that it is unfortunate if this focus on a special case of population dynamics should distract our attention from more general problems in population and community dynamics.

Keywords

climatecyclicitydensity-dependenceecological hypothesisecological theoryEltonpopulation dynamicspopulation ecologypopulation fluctuationshistory of population ecologytrophic interactionsspatial ecology
Type
Review Article
Information
Biological Reviews , Volume 76 , Issue 1 , February 2001 , pp. 129 - 158
Copyright
© Cambridge Philosophical Society 2001

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