Flexibility in the duration of parental care: female leopards prioritise cub survival over reproductive output

1.Deciding when to terminate care of offspring is a key consideration for parents. Prolonging care may increase fitness of current offspring, but it can also reduce opportunities for future reproduction. Despite its evolutionary importance, few studies have explored the optimal duration of parental care, particularly among large carnivores.

2.We used a 40-year dataset to assess the trade-offs associated with the length of maternal care in leopards in the Sabi Sand Game Reserve, South Africa. We compared the costs imposed by care on the survival and residual reproductive value of leopard mothers against the benefits derived from maternal care in terms of increased offspring survival, recruitment and reproduction. We also examined the demographic and ecological factors affecting the duration of care in light of five explanatory hypotheses: litter-size, sex-allocation, resource-limitation, timing-of-independence, and terminal-investment.

3.Duration of care exhibited by female leopard...