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Movements of Arctic Fox populations in the region of Baffin Bay and Smith Sound

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2009

Charles Elton
Affiliation:
Bureau of Animal Population, University of Oxford

Extract

The Arctic Fox (Alopex lagopusand allied forms) is not only the chief furbearing animal in circumboreal regions, but also offers some fascinating ecological problems in its strong fluctuations in numbers, its extensive migrations, the diseases that appear periodically in its populations, and in the existence of two well-marked colour phases—the white and the “blue”—the relative abundance of which varies geographically in an extraordinary manner. Except in the U.S.S.R., comparatively little systematic study in the field has been made of this species by biologists, although it has been the object of several enquiries conducted through fur-trading and other organisations (of which the Canadian Arctic Wild Life Enquiry (Chitty and Chitty, 1941, 1945) is an example), and it has been observed in a scattered fashion by innumerable polarexpeditions.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1949

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