Data from: Coping with strong variations in winter severity: plastic habitat selection of deer at high density

Few empirical studies on large herbivores considered how behavioral
plasticity could enhance their capacity to cope with rapid and extreme
changes in weather conditions at several spatiotemporal scales. During
winter, large herbivores living under low predation pressure mainly
trade-off benefits of forage acquisition with the costs of exposure to
harsh weather conditions. We assessed the changes in this trade-off for
white-tailed deer adult females on Anticosti Island (Canada) at different
scales during 2 contrasted winters (i.e., a harsher and a milder winter).
We hypothesized that deer should adjust their foraging decisions to avoid
cold wind-chill temperatures and high locomotion costs in deep snow as
winter severity increased. We compared habitat selection at the home-range
scale, habitat selection relative to thermal conditions within the home
range, and selection for foraging sites relative to snow conditions along
the foraging tracks between winters. Home-range selection of deer was
similar between winters. Deer adjusted their within-home-range selection
relative to thermal conditions: they selected thermal cover during
cold-stress periods while their selection for open areas increased during
the warmer periods. Deer showed high behavioral plasticity along their
foraging tracks: they selected tracks with different forage resources
between winters and traded-off the locomotion costs in deep snow cover
with the benefits of forage availability as winter severity increased. We
discuss how behavioral plasticity of deer in their thermoregulatory
behavior and foraging site selection allows them to cope with varying
winter conditions, in a system where their short-term behavioral
adaptations were already strongly constrained by intraspecific
competition.