Born in heterogenous landscapes: birth timing, body mass and growth of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) fawns in contrasting habitats

Although the widespread effects of global change impact almost all ecosystems, we lack a detailed understanding of how wildlife that thrive in human-dominated environments are able to adjust their life history to modifications in land use of their natural habitat. In particular, spatial variation in environmental conditions is predicted to influence development during the crucial early life phase, with marked impacts on individual performance and population dynamics for long-lived species. Large herbivores such as roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), a synanthropic species, have increased substantially in number and distribution over the last half century across Europe. Roe deer have been particularly successful, gradually colonizing agricultural landscapes to cope with a global warming-driven phenological mismatch in their natural forest habitat. However, to date, little is known about how habitat heterogeneity impacts their demographic performance in this heavily human-impacted environment..., Females GPS Data acquisition
Each winter, from 2007 to 2022, we caught roe deer (at least 8 months old) between January and March using drive netting on seven capture sites, two located in forest habitat, two in mixed habitat, and three in open habitat. At capture, the deer are immediately tranquilized and transferred to a wooden holding box until the end of the drive. Subsequently, each animal is equipped with ear tags and a GPS collar (Lotek 3300S revision 2 or GPS PLUS-1C Store on Board, Vectronic Aerospace) (see data CEFS 2021). Based on tooth wear, we distinguished juveniles (8-10 months old) from adults (>20 months old) and then released the animal on site. Each deer was monitored by GPS from capture until the end of the calendar year (11 months). Density in the mixed and open habitat of this population appears quite consistent over time and likely much lower than in forest habitat (Hewison et al. 2007) at between 5.07 (± 3.32) to 6.99 (± 4.24) individuals per 100 ha.
Fawn capt..., , # Born in heterogenous landscapes: birth timing, body mass and growth of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) fawns in contrasting habitats.

## **Data:**

**Data for body mass/habitat analyses:**

We investigated the effects of habitat, sex and birth date on fawn's body mass during the 20 first days of their lives. To do so, we used the following data to perform the analyses, by building generalized additive models (GAM):

*Data_gamm_models_whole_dataset.rds*

We performed the same analyses with fawns who survived until the set of autumn only:

*Data_gamm_models_alive_dataset.rds*

**Data for phenology/parturition dates analyses:**

Data with the birth dates, including those calculated from the age estimation during fawn captures, and those estimated from GPS monitoring of females in spring, for each habitat.

*birth_date_Forest.rds*

*birth_date_Mixed.rds*

*birth_date_Open.rds*

## **Data:**

*Script_body_mass_habitat_birth_date:*

Script used to build GAM from the data: \"Data_gamm_model...