Ambient temperature has a high impact on life history traits in hares as these animals live above-ground throughout the year ( Hackländer et al. 2002). Hence, reproductive traits should be affected by ambient temperatures resulting in a reduced reproduction in periods of higher energy demands (e.g. in cold winters or dry and hot summers), both for adults and young. Energy allocation to growth or reproduction should be flexible in hares according to current environmental conditions. Consequently, one could expect that European hares dwelling in areas of higher energy demands would have larger body sizes, larger fat

depots and a delayed first reproduction. To test this assumption we compared yearly reproductive output as well as age, body size, body weight and body SCH727965 condition of female European hares from Belgium Dorsomorphin ic50 (temperate oceanic climate) and Lower Austria (temperate continental climate). We sampled female European hares during regular autumnal hunts in November and December 2006 and 2007 in Belgium (Moerbeke and Sint-Laureins as well as Bulskamp) and Lower Austria (Zwerndorf, Lassee, Stripfing

and Baumgarten) which differ markedly in annual amplitude of temperature (Schuurmans 1995). This is indicated by the degree of continentality (after Gorczynski 1920). On the basis of more recent data (Belgium: 1961–1990, Lower Austria: 1971–2000) the continentality index for Belgium is K = 12 (climate data from Uccle, http://www.freemeteo.com) and for Lower Austria K = 26 (climate

data from Fuchsenbigl, http://www.zamg.ac.at). We determined the following variables: body weight to the nearest 1 g, dried eye-lens Oxalosuccinic acid weight (DLW) in mg following Suchentrunk et al. (1991), head-body-length (HBL) in cm following Zörner (1996) and an index of body condition, i.e. the retroperitoneal fat mass expressed in per cent body weight (RFI). As Belgian hares have generally lower HBL-values (see results) we used relative dried eye-lens weight (relDLW = DLW/HBL) as a crude index of age in adult females. To determine the yearly individual reproductive output we counted the total number of placental scars (PSN) after staining (Hackländer et al., 2001 and Bray et al., 2003). We excluded females whenever placental scar counts were ambiguous or when females did not reproduce at all (PSN = 0, see Smith et al. 2010). Moreover, we excluded subadult females (born in the year of the hunt), with DLW less than 270 mg (see Suchentrunk et al. 1991). All variables were normally distributed. General linear models were used to analyse the impact of study site on individual parameters mentioned above and to determine the impact of study site, body weight, RFI, HBL on PSN in reproductively active females, respectively. Although we sampled 158 adult hares in total, not all variables were available for each individual. Therefore sample sizes differ between tests and are given separately for each result. All tests were computed with SPSS 15.0 for Windows.