A brown lemming in front of a tunnel entrance. These small arctic mammals spend much of their time in tunnels that they dig in the ground or in the snow.
A brown lemming in front of a tunnel entrance. These small arctic mammals spend much of their time in tunnels that they dig in the ground or in the snow. Developed by a team at Laval University, this collar, which weighs less than a dime, will allow the study of lemming activity patterns during the summer Although lemmings play a central role in the Arctic terrestrial food chain, their living habits are still largely unknown. One reason is that these small rodents spend most of the year in tunnels in the ground or snow, out of sight of researchers. Thanks to an ultra-light photo-sensitive collar developed by a team at Laval University's Centre d'études nordiques, lemmings may soon be able to reveal some of the secrets surrounding their summertime schedule. David Bolduc and Pierre Legagneux of the Department of Biology, Dominique Fauteux of the Canadian Museum of Nature, and Jean-Marie Trudeau and Éric Bharucha of Laval University's North Sentinel Instrument Development Platform have designed and tested a light-sensitive collar for lemmings that detects and records their movements between tunnels and the tundra surface. "In the Arctic, it is daylight continuously during the summer.
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