Female Soay sheep do not adjust their maternal care behaviour to the quality of their home range

Abstract

Lay SummaryUngulate mothers should provide more maternal care when resources are plenty. Few studies quantify individual differences in resource use, instead using population-level metrics such as between-year variation in environmental conditions. We found that care provisioning by female Soay sheep was similar, regardless of their home range quality. This may be because summer resource levels are high, and demonstrates the need to accurately characterize the environment experienced by individual animals.Twitter: @ce_regan