Version dated: August 13, 2020 1 Running head: Forage quality shapes herbivore home range 2 Forage stoichiometry predicts the home range size of a small 3 terrestrial herbivore 4 Matteo Rizzuto ∗ , Shawn J. Leroux, Eric Vander Wal, Isabella C. Richmond, Travis R. 5 Heckford, Juliana Balluff-Fry, and Yolanda F. Wiersma 6 Department of Biology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Canada 7 *Corresponding author. email: mrizzuto@mun.ca 8 Number of words in abstract: 350 9 Number of pages: 29 10 Number of tables:2 11 Number of fgures:2 12 Abstract 13 Consumers make space use decisions based on resource quality. Most studies that investigate 14 the infuence of resource quality on the spatial ecology of consumers use diverse proxies for 15 quality including measures based on habitat classifcation, forage species diversity and abun- 16 dance, and nutritional indicators, e.g., protein. Ecological stoichiometry measures resource 17 quality in terms of elemental ratios, e.g., carbon (C):nitrogen (N) ratio, but rarely have these 18 currencies been used to study consumer space use decisions. Yet, elemental ratios provide 19 a uniquely quantitative way to assess resource quality. Consequently, ecological stoichiom- 20 etry allows for investigation of how consumers respond to spatial heterogeneity in resource 21 quality by changing their space use, e.g. their home range size, and how this may infuence 22 ecosystem dynamics and trophic interactions. Here, we test whether the home range size of a 23 keystone boreal herbivore, the snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus), varies with diferences in 24 1 . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license available under a (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made The copyright holder for this preprint this version posted August 14, 2020. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.13.248831 doi: bioRxiv preprint