Talk:9.6 year cycle of lynx abundance

Discussion on merger with Canadian Lynx article

I think that this would be a mistake. This article is about a 9.6 year cycle that has been reported extensively in many animal populations and happens to be best known in the Lynx. The intent of the article is to give information about the state of knowledge of thet cycle rather than about the lynx. Ray Tomes 05:22, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

On second thought, I agree with this. This cycle is as much of an interesting fact on the Snowshoe hare and Boreal forest as it is of the Canadian lynx. I do believe this article should be renamed. Boreal forest population cycle or Snowshoe hare–Candian lynx population cycle. —Ruud 16:34, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Well it is also observed in species unrelated to that habitat such as Atlantic salmon and weather variables. It would be reasonable to remove the later part of the name and simply make it 9.6 year cycle. Ray Tomes 20:52, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. So when I speculated that the article was created for another purpose entirely than to describe the lynx population cycle, I might have been on to something after all? I still believe, as I indicated in that comment, that a merger would work best for these two articles at this time, as they are both so short. But I can also understand the inclination to keep them separate. Tim Shuba 04:49, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

What other purpose? The purpose is to give some information about a cycle. There are a lot of other known cycles on which there is no information in wikipedia. Unfortunately articles are being deleted faster than they are being added and as someone noted in the list of cycles deletion discussion there is precious little information about cycles. One reason for this is that a small group of people are determined to delete anything that I do. They do not look at the facts. Ray Tomes 05:38, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

No, those cycles are completely unrelated (despite the coincidence that they have an average duration of c. 10 years) so it makes no sense to discuss them in the same article. —Ruud 06:52, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

If you look at the reference The Case for Cycles You will find that there is ample evidence there that groups of cycles with the same period are not as you claim unrelated. It has been found in all cases where many cycles in different things have the same period, they also have the same phase. This argues very strongly for a common cause, even though there is no generally accepted agreement on what that cause is. Therefore, in the interests of future scientists discovering the common causes it is important to mention these facts. Ray Tomes 21:50, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Have there been any other papers published on peer-reviewed journals other than Dewey's Case for Cycles? If not, this does not warrant an article on "the 9.6 year cycle", at most a short mention that there exist other population cycles with an average length of 9.6 years in an article on the Snowshoe hare–Candian lynx population cycle (probably not though, as this implicitly implies a connection on which there has been no published information and even of which Dewey doesn't offer an explanation.) —Ruud 22:01, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I might have started adding an answer to the wrong question here. Anyway, I will leave it all as background material. The CCLC (see below) has an article on the 9.6 year cycle and lists some 25 variable that have cycles recorded as 9.6 or 9.67 years. Of these, 15 show the peaks occuring in a single year, and many others in the adjacent years. Such a common set of phases argues strongly for a common cause. I have practiced as a statistician and can say it is highly significant. The source of information on these cycles is diverse, including the Lynx (the best known example) which is widely reported. There was a European peer reviewed Journal of Interdisciplinary Cycles Research which is no longer published. I have only a single issue from 1988 and so cannot answer your question from that. There is a still active organisation called CIFA in Europe and Russia (warning - there are about 6 other organisations called CIFA) and they have published similar articles from different sources. In particular the work of Simon Shnol' and colleagues show that many variables that are considered unrelated by physicists (e.g. biological specimens, chemical reactions, biophysics, nuclear physics) actually show fluctuations that are common in different locations and in different variables. These papers have been published in Biophysica and elsewhere [1] for example. This is very solid research but little known and inexplicable by current physics models. There are many articles in Cycles magazine that address common cycles periods in different variables. The magazine was not peer-reviewed, and articles ranged in quality over time and even at one time. The best of these articles were selected in 1987 by the FSC advisors to make the 4 volume set "Cycles Classic Library Collection" (CCLC) and the paper by Dewey was one of these. I am happy to provide more articles from this source for wikipedia. I can tell you that these sets of cycles are not just "of about the same period", but all have the same accurate period and very close to the same phase, which is statistically very significant. Ray Tomes 00:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I note that this article has effectively been deleted. There is a note that it was merged with Canadian Lynx but there is no trace of it there. This follows a vote for deletion which was lost, and that means the article should remain, and a vote for merger which had no support. What is going on here? This is quite unsatisfactory when actions are taken without any support. Ray Tomes 10:21, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah, no I hadn't noticed this discussion. However, I think the merger should stand. Both paragraphs from the original text survive on in the Canadian Lynx article as the two paragraphs immediately before the Subspecies section. Look again. - UtherSRG (talk) 18:55, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I also agree with UtherSRG. As it stands now the cycle article is quite small, with not enough information to stand on its own. However, the two paragraphs are a useful addition to the parent article. When there is more information on the cycle that article can be split out from the parent. SilkTork 18:53, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Request for Citations

The first 2 citations should be to the Wing article (first ref), the others to the Dewey one (2nd ref)listed at the end. Ray Tomes 12:16, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

In the AfD discussion for this article, user Addhoc was kind enough to provide this link to a lot of sources that mention this subject. In going through it, I could find no reference to Dewey whatsoever in any of the scholarly references (I wasn't looking for Wing, but didn't notice him either). Same goes for my search at scholar.google.com. Unless someone can point to solid scholarly references that cite Dewey in proportion to the mention of him in the article, I intend to remove information about Dewey's views from the article, as well as remove the citations as appropriate. Anything relevant to Dewey himself may be placed in the article that bears his name, of course, if it fits there. This is accordance with policy WP:Undue weight. There appear to be many recent journal papers and books written on the subject. Any thoughts on good recent peer-reviewed material will be welcome. Tim Shuba 04:19, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

What Drives the 10-year Cycle of Snowshoe Hares? contradicts some of the statements currently in this article and provides a very extensive bibliography. A Spatial Analysis of Wildlife's Ten-Year Cycle might be a very useful reference as well. —Ruud 06:48, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

These are good references. The first one is very useful, and there is no reason that the article should not express that there are several opinions about the cause, as there are. I draw your attention to the fact (mentioned in more detail by me above) that studies of synchronicity of cycles with a common period show that there is some unknown common cause to all cycles of a particular period. This has been found for more than a dozen different cycle periods. Ray Tomes 21:56, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

In the first ref above by Ruud, it states "To answer this question,we conducted five food-addition

experiments during two hare cycles in the southwestern Yukon. In four we provided high-quality rabbit chow without limit to hares; in the fifth experiment we added highquality natural food to a declining hare population (Krebs et al. 1985, 1995, Sinclair et al. 1988). The response of hares to rabbit chow is classic:Hares move into the food-addition areas and their density increases approximately two- to threefold in comparison with control areas. But once the density increases on the food-addition areas, the hare cycle continues unchanged.Hares decline in number at the same time and at the same rate on the food areas as on unmanipulated controls." which shows clearly to me that there is an outside agent causing the cycle. Ray Tomes 22:03, 20 March 2007 (UTC)