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. 2021 Mar 9;11(9):4644-4655.
doi: 10.1002/ece3.7364. eCollection 2021 May.

Seven decades of southern range dynamics of Canada lynx

Robby R Marrotte  1 , Jeff Bowman  1   2
Affiliations

Seven decades of southern range dynamics of Canada lynx

Robby R Marrotte et al. Ecol Evol. .

Abstract

The range of the Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis) has contracted substantially from its historical range. Using harvest records, we found that the southern range of the lynx in Ontario in the late 1940s collapsed and then, in a short period of time, increased to its largest extent in the mid-1960s when the lynx range spread south of the boreal forest for a decade. After this expansion, the southern range contracted northwards beginning in the 1970s. Most recently, there has been a slight expansion between 2010 and 2017. We have attributed these dynamics on the southern range periphery to the fluctuation of the boreal lynx population in the core of the species' range. In addition, connectivity to boreal lynx populations and snow depth seemed to condition whether the lynx expanded into an area. However, we did not find any evidence to suggest that these changes were due to anthropogenic landscape disturbances or competition. The boreal lynx population does not reach the peak abundance it once did, without which we would not expect to see large expansions of the southern lynx range as in the mid-1960s. Our results suggest that the southern lynx range in Ontario has been driven by the magnitude of the boreal lynx population cycle, connectivity to the boreal forest, and snow conditions. Future persistence of lynx in the southern range periphery will likely depend on dynamics in the range core.

Keywords: Canada lynx; Great Lakes region; Lynx canadensis; harvest records; range dynamics; spatiotemporal.

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Conflict of interest statement

None declared.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Sampling units in the southern Canada lynx range in Ontario, Canada, used to estimate the probability of harvesting a lynx between 1948 and 2017. The dashed black line is the southern limit of the boreal forest by Brandt (2009). Spatial layers for administrative boundaries were gathered from the Database of Global Administrative Areas (https://gadm.org/)
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Number of Canada lynx harvested in Ontario, Canada, between 1919 and 2018. Values earlier than 1947 were from Novak (1987a, 1987b). Later values were aggregated from the Ontario fur returns that were used in this study
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Spatial–temporal pattern of the probability of harvesting a Canada lynx from 1948 to 2017 in Ontario, Canada. The dashed black line is the boreal forest southern limit by Brandt (2009). Spatial layers for administrative boundaries were gathered from the Database of Global Administrative Areas (https://gadm.org/)
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Area of the Canada lynx southern range in Ontario, Canada, between 1948 and 2017. The maximum area of the west, central, and east zone was 65,548, 54,623, and 30,043 km2. The area was calculated by summing the area of the sampling units (hexagons) that had a probability of harvesting a lynx over 0.5
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