Old lemming puzzle gets new answer
By Susan Milius
What makes lemming numbers boom and bust? The answer to this question—literally the oldest in the study of population cycles—is food supply, claims an international research team.
The lemming population cycle, with peaks 1,000 times as high as its valleys, was the first discovered, explains Peter Turchin of the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Biologist Charles S. Elton pointed it out in 1924, elaborating on a notion that struck him while browsing in a Norwegian nature book. He couldn’t read the words, but the pattern in the numbers jumped out.