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A new study by researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks's Institute of Arctic Biology provides compelling evidence that Canada lynx populations in Interior Alaska experience a "traveling population wave" affecting their reproduction, movement and survival.

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This discovery could help wildlife managers make better-informed decisions when managing one of the boreal forest's keystone predators.

A traveling population wave is a common dynamic in biology, in which the number of animals in a habitat grows and shrinks, moving across a region like a ripple.

Alaska's Canada lynx populations rise and fall in response to the 10- to 12-year boom-and-bust cycle of their primary prey: the snowshoe hare. During these cycles, hares reproduce rapidly, and then their population crashes when food resources become scarce. The lynx population follows this cycle, typically lagging one to two years behind.

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