Abstract
Two hundred delegates from 14 countries attended and presented more than 150 scientific papers, making it one of the biggest Arctic Ungulate Conferences ever. The scientific and social programme as well as the abstracts have been published in Rangifer Report No. 4, 1999. In an important break with normal practice, keynote speakers included scientists of international reputation who do not normally work with Arctic ungulates. They were asked to review recent work in northern species/ecosystems thus providing the conference with novel criticism and new perpectives. Their papers are published in this volume. Delegates' papers will be published in later issues of Rangifer. The Conference also included a Circumpolar PhD-Network in Arctic Environmental Studies (CAES) workshop: "Reindeer 2000", attended by 47 participants presenting 25 student contributions, 5 keynote lectures and 3 introductory speeches. A Rangifer Special Issue with workshop papers is planned for publication later in 2000.
Highlights
W h e n natural diets meet an animal's requirement for energy, other essential nutrients such as protein, fats minerals and vitamins w i l l usually be supplied i n amounts at least sufficient for survival (Kay et al, 1984)
The few studies carried out so far i n arctic ungulates suggest that previous predictions have generally underestimated the true level of expenditure, that there is considerable between animal variation in the level of expenditure and that this is largely determined by physical activity
Energy expenditure is only equal to the more useful parameter of the energy requirement when an animal is in energy balance
Summary
W h e n natural diets meet an animal's requirement for energy, other essential nutrients such as protein, fats minerals and vitamins w i l l usually be supplied i n amounts at least sufficient for survival (Kay et al, 1984). N o estimate of precision was available for these data but similar previous studies (Gotaas et al, 1997) indicated a similar level of precision to that found i n red deer, suggesting that i n truly free ranging animals the energy expenditure difference between individuals is much larger than is found i n farmed species This is important with tespect to the interactions between individuals within a herd but it has implications for the number and type of i n d i viduals which have to be monitored (using D L W , the factorial method, or any other approach) i n order to give a good estimate of the expenditute of the whole group. This kind of difference should be large enough to provide an estimate of the relative contribution of these forages to nutrient intake the approach of exploiting natural C 1 3 abundance variations may be useful i n studying the diet selection and intake of free living arctic ungulates even when consuming mixed diets
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