Université du Québec à Rimouski
M.Sc. candidate
Supervisor: Dominique Berteaux
Start: 2020-08-31
End: 2022-08-31

Project

Habitat selection of Arctic hare at regional scale on Ellesmere island (Nunavut)
In 2019, Prof. Dominique Berteaux's team documented a large-scale mass movement of arctic hares north of Ellesmere Island. The individuals studied moved in the fall over 100 km from the Canadian Forces Station Alert to Lake Hazen in Quttinirpaaq National Park. Although it has already been suggested that the Arctic hare can perform migratory movements and that our observations seem to point to such a phenomenon, migration has never been demonstrated for this species. The hare is a key species in the polar desert, being an important prey for several arctic predators . A better knowledge of the factors that influence the habitat choices of the Arctic hare during the different phases of its life cycle, thus causing major movements, would shed new light on the dynamics of the entire ecosystem. My main objective is to determine the main factors explaining the habitat selection of female Arctic hares on a regional scale northeast of Ellesmere Island. More precisely, I am interested in the selection of habitat according to the 3 main phases of the annual life cycle of the Arctic hare: the rearing of the young (summer), the wintering, and the relocation between young rearing and wintering areas.

Keywords

Sélection d'habitat, lièvre arctique, désert polaire, mouvements à large échelle, écologie du mouvement, Haut-Arctique, habitat selection, Arctic hare, Polar desert, Movement ecology, high Arctic