Juvenile predation overwhelms nutritional effects on female ungulate fat reserves in a high-predation system

Ungulate body fat reserves reflect the nutritional environment, often serving as a useful indicator of bottom-up resource availability. However, body fat reserves also integrate energetic costs associated with avoiding predation risk and reproductive effort, and it is unknown how bottom-up and top-down factors integrate to affect body fat reserves. We used generalized mixed-effects models to evaluate how bottom-up, top-down, and intrinsic factors explained variation in winter ingesta-free body fat (IFBF) of female elk (Cervus canadensis) near Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada, from 2015 to 2021. We found two top models were competitive, with calf survival during the first 3-4 months of life and female age included in both models. There was more support for bottom-up forage effects than indirect predation risk effects. Based on model predictions, females with a calf surviving through the previous summer had 3.6 percentage points (95% CI: 2.4%, 4.9%) lower IFBF the subsequent winter th..., , # Data from: Juvenile predation overwhelms nutritional effects on female ungulate fat reserves in a high-predation system

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.3ffbg7b0m](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3ffbg7b0m)

## Description of the data and file structure

Ingesta-free body fat data (IFBF) were collected from elk (*Cervus canadensis*) from 2015-2021 in Alberta, Canada, as part of the long-term Ya Ha Tinda Elk Research Project. Repository for data used in a research article in Functional Ecology.

### Files and variables

#### File: BodyFatData.csv

**Description:** Final data set of 198 measurements of body fat data from female elk in Alberta, Canada, 2015-2021. All missing values are indicated by NA. See manuscript for covariate details.

##### Variables

* Record: integer numbering each record from 1 to 198
* IFBF: ingesta-free body fat (%)
* age: animal age in years at time of IFBF measurement
* mig: migratory strategy employed elk the summer prior to IFBF measurement (east, west, resident..., ,