The beat of rodent population cycles resonates at every level of Northern ecosystem food webs.Suggestions of a general collapse of cycles since the 1980s have raised concerns about the loss of essential ecosystem functions.Explaining the causes of the spectacular rodent population cycles has stimulated vast amounts of research and heated debates.In contrast,little research has yet been undertaken to characterize their apparent long-term dampening,with the implicit assumption that the delayed density-dependent feedbacks thought to produce population cycles in the first place must also be involved in their loss.I present recent research carried out in Europe,aimed at establishing the extent and exact nature of the change in vole population cycles from a population dynamics perspective,and exploring the possible mechanisms responsible for changes.I discuss hypotheses involving local and large scale drivers of change and move to the relevance of the findings from European voles to other taxa and to vole population cycles in other parts of the world.I conclude with an overview of evidence for the wider consequences of rodent cycle dampening across trophic levels in different ecosystems,with a particular emphasis on predators.