Factors aecting maternal care in an income breeder, the European roe deer

1. Maternal care is a major component of demographic tactics in mammals. In ungulates most work has been done on capital breeders (e.g. bighorn sheep), which rely heavily on body reserves to raise their young. Roe deer, in contrast, are close to the income breeder end of the capital–income breeder continuum, and show high levels of maternal care. 2. The aim of this study was to explore the factors determining the level of mater-nal care in roe deer, in particular the eects of maternal body weight, mother’s par-ity, litter size and year of birth on the amount of prenatal care (i.e. the average mass of an ospring multiplied by the number of ospring) and postnatal care (i.e. the average growth rate of the ospring multiplied by their number). The study was carried out on a captive population of roe deer fed ad libitum, and in a wild population. 3. In both populations prenatal care increased with increasing maternal body weight. In the population fed ad libitum this eect was found in light females only (<22 kg); in the wild population the positive relationship between maternal bod