Spatial distribution in mammals, and thereby home range size, is influenced by many different factors including body size, sex, age, reproductive status, season, availability of forage, availability of water, fragmentation of landscape, trophic level and intra‐ and inter‐specific competition. Using linear mixed models, we looked for factors shaping the variation in size of spring‐summer and winter home ranges for 51 radio‐collared adult female roe deer at Trois Fontaines forest, Champagne–Ardenne, France (1996–2005). Home range size of females was larger in winter than in spring–summer, decreased with age, and decreased with increasing quality. Females in low quality areas adjusted the size of their home range to include more patches of habitat so that all female deer obtained similar amounts of food resources (total biomass of 6.73±2.34 tons (mean±SE) for each home range). Such adjustments of home range size in response to patchiness of resources led to marked between‐female variation in home range size. Our results demonstrate that roe deer females have different tactics of habitat use according to spatial variations in habitat quality so that females get similar food resources in highly productive environments such as the Trois Fontaines forest.

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Increasing populations of large herbivores during the last decades have had a major impact on vegetation.While several studies have looked for quantifying this impact in terms of plant biomass, plant survival or financial costs, the potential benefit of using the response of the vegetation to changes in browsing pressure by large herbivores to monitor their populations has been poorly investigated. As getting accurate estimates of density in populations of large herbivores is problematic, the use of indicators measuring the intensity of browsing might offer reliable alternative to managers. From the intensive monitoring of a roe deer population subject to an experimental manipulation of density, we looked for assessing the response of oak to changes of roe deer population size. Using a simple browsing index calculated from field data over 10 years, we found that this oak browsing index linearly increased with increasing population size of roe deer. This suggests that such an oak browsing index might be a reliable "indicator of ecological change" for monitoring roe deer populations in oak forests with natural regeneration.

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Natal dispersal is a three-phase process: the decision to leave the natal range, the search phase and finally the settlement phase. Not much is known about the search phase in large herbivores. We quantified the search behaviour of young roe deer from two contrasting populations, using different measures: search area, search rate, search intensity and philopatry of the search. A Principal Component Analysis showed that most measures were highly correlated. Comparing the first axis from this analysis between adult and young roe deer from the two different populations while controlling for habitat quality, we found that the young occupied a larger area, ranged on average farther away and performed more excursions than adults, regardless of their sex. These findings support the hypothesis that young roe deer explore their environment before definitively leaving their natal home range and settling in their adult range. key words: Ungulates; home range; search behaviour; habitat use.