Maternal, social and abiotic environment effects on growth vary across life stages in a cooperative mammal

1. Resource availability plays a key role in driving variation in somatic growth and body condition, and the factors determining access to resources vary considerably across life stages. Parents and carers may exert important influences in early life, when individuals are nutritionally dependent, with abiotic environmental effects having stronger influences later in development as individuals forage independently. 2. Most studies have measured specific factors influencing growth across development, or have compared relative influences of different factors within specific life stages. Such studies may not capture whether early-life factors continue have delayed effects at later stages, or if social factors change when individuals become nutritionally independent and adults become competitors for, rather than providers of, food. 3. Here, we examined variation in the influence of the abiotic, social and maternal environment on growth across life stages in a wild population of cooperatively...