Norway lemming

Norway lemming
Conservation status
Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Rodentia
Superfamily:	Muroidea
Family:	Cricetidae
Subfamily:	Arvicolinae
Genus:	Lemmus
Species:	L. lemmus
Binomial name
Lemmus lemmus Linnaeus, 1758

The Norway lemming (also Norwegian lemming), Lemmus lemmus, is a common species of lemming found in northern Scandinavia and adjacent areas of Russia. It is the only vertebrate species endemic to the region. The Norway lemming dwells in tundra and fells, and prefers to live near water. Adults feed primarily on sedges, grasses and moss. They are active at both day and night, alternating naps with periods of activity.

The Norway lemming has a dramatic 3-4 year population cycle, in which the species' population periodically rises to unsustainable levels, leading to high mortality, which causes the population to crash again. This abrupt fluctuation, also found in related species, has given rise to the myth of lemming mass suicide.^{[citation needed]}

The Norway Lemming spends the winter in nests under the snow. When the spring thaws begin and the snow starts to collapse, Norway Lemmings must migrate to higher ground where the snow is still firm enough for safety, or, more commonly, to lower ground, where they spend the summer months. In autumn, they must time their movement back to sheltered higher ground carefully, leaving after there is alpine snow cover for them to burrow and nest in, and before the lowlands are made uninhabitable by frost and ice.

Drawing of Norway Lemming

When the seasons are particularly good—short winters without unexpected thaws or freezes, and long summers—the Norway Lemming population can increase explosively: they reach sexual maturity less than a month after birth, and breed year-round if conditions are right, producing a litter of six to eight young every three to four weeks.^{[citation needed]} Being solitary creatures by nature, the stronger lemmings drive the weaker and younger ones off long before a food shortage occurs. The young lemmings disperse in random directions looking for vacant territory. Where geographical features constrain their movements and channel them into a relatively narrow corridor, large numbers can build up leading to social friction, distress, and eventually a mass panic can follow, where they flee in all directions. Lemmings do migrate, and in vast numbers sometimes, but the deliberate march into the sea happens only in the fantasies of film makers.

According to genetic research undertaken by Fedorov and Stenseth (2001), the Norwegian lemming survived the Pleistocene glaciation in western Europe, inhabiting various refugia which were not covered by ice. Alternatively, some researchers have contended that the Norwegian lemming populations had arisen from ancestors of the present-day Brown Lemming (Lemmus sibiricus), moving in after glaciers receded.

References

• Fedorov, V.B. & Nils Christian Stenseth (2001). Glacial survival of the Norwegian lemming (Lemmus lemmus) in Scandinavia: inference from mitochondrial DNA variation. Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 268(1469), 809-814. [1]
• [2]

External links

• Tundra Animals species profile
• Boreal Forest species profile
• Nature in Finland species profile
• America Zoo species profile
• The lemming cyclePDF (92.6 KiB) article by Nils Christian Stenseth on the regular population cycles seen in lemmings and other northern rodents