Disentangling direct and indirect determinants of the duration of maternal care in brown bears: environmental context matters

The duration of maternal care, an important life history trait affecting population dynamics, varies greatly within species. Yet, our understanding of its predictors is limited, mostly correlative, and subject to misinterpretations, due to difficulties to disentangle the role of maternal- and offspring-related characteristics.

We conducted path analysis on a dataset including 217 brown bear litters captured over a 29-year period in two populations in Sweden (“North” and “South”) facing contrasting environmental conditions to identify and quantify the causes of variation in the duration of maternal care (1.5 years or 5 years).