relationship between snowshoe hare and lynx answers
The lynx and snowshoe hare predator-prey system in the Kluane region of the Yukon, Canada, is used as a case study.
These are generally assumed to be linked to each other because lynx are specialist predators on hares.
The snowshoe hare and the Canadian lynx in the boreal forests of North America show 9- to 11-year density cycles.
When the snowshoe hares rebound, lynx numbers also increase. This unusually tight predator-prey relationship means that when hare numbers change, so do lynx numbers (and vice versa), sometimes drastically.
All of these relationships may be equally advantageous to the parties involved, or they may be more beneficial to one organism over the other.
This hare’s fur coat, which varies with the season, will surely stand out against the October snow—the pelt has not yet turned fully white.
More than two centuries ago, trappers for the Hudson's Bay Company, trading in the fur of both snowshoe hare and lynx, noticed a curious phenomenon: Some years the landscape would be hopping with hares; other years they were ostensibly gone. Become a Member