How do Arctic rodent communities function: an analysis of individual specialization in herbivores

This is an application for a fellowship for Eeva Soininen within the Leiv Eiriksson mobility program. The suggested exchange is between the Institute of Arctic and Marine Biology, the University of Tromsø, Norway (home institute) and the Canadian Research Chair in Conservation of Northern Ecosystems (CCEN) of the University of Quebec at Rimouski, Canada (host institute), lead by Prof. D. Berteaux, for six months in 2010. Soininen is currently doing a PhD-study on the rodent communities of Northern Norway, in the research group of Prof. R. Ims and Prof. N. Yoccoz. In her thesis, she is studying the diet of rodents, their specialization on particular food items and the potential implications of this to community dynamics. An important part of her thesis is to analyze a 3-year dataset of plant use by rodents in Northern Norway and the Russian Arctic. Linking her work with European sites together with similar data from Northern Canada will provide a possibility to understand the implications of these results at a pan-Arctic scale. These sites are part of a general International Polar Year (IPY) effort to take similar measurements of arctic consumer dynamic. Building on these first steps of collaboration by linking the data sets together would be a logical fol low-up of the IPY legacies. Prof. G. Gauthier, at the University of Laval, Canada, also has similar data, and collaboration with him is included in the project. The dataset will be expanded with more samples during field work in 2010, and subsequently the se data will be analyzed in collaboration and co-published in peer reviewed articles. The main goals of the planned exchange are to improve our understanding of (1) the function of arctic rodent communities and (2) the mechanisms affecting individual spec ialization at an Arctic scale. Both research groups are recognized for their studies of the dynamics and function of arctic ecosystems, and the proposed stay will benefit their collaboration on these topics.