The potential drivers of small mammal population cycles have fascinated researchers for more than a century. Bottom-up (food availability) and top-down (predators) have been suggested to be universal drivers. Already in the infancy of quantitative population ecology, pathogens – likely inducing different functional responses compared to predators – were suggested to regulate the number of animals, but empiric support is so far limited. Weather conditions affect the behavior of small mammals, but we lack knowledge of the underlying mechanisms and fitness consequences.
We combine long-term (>50 years) data, retrospective analyses and experiments to disentangle the potential drivers and mechanisms of small mammal fitness and population fluctuations.
Alexandra Seger
Iris Van Driel