Diets of denning female Pacific martens vary with the developmental stage of their kits

Food resources can be a limiting factor and natural and anthropogenic influences that alter the abundance of food resources can affect population performance and persistence. Reproduction in mammals is energetically costly; therefore, understanding how food resources influence reproduction is essential, especially for species of conservation concern. The objectives of this study were to characterize Pacific marten (Martes caurina) diets during the denning period and determine whether diets differed by sex or by phase of the denning period. We used 943 scats to reconstruct sex‐specific diets of martens in the Sierra Nevada mountains during the denning period to evaluate sex‐specific hypotheses of predation patterns. During the lactation phase, females preyed primarily on large‐sized prey (62.5% metabolizeable energy) 5.7‐times more than males. This likely optimized both energy gain and minimized time spent away from dependent young. During the weaning phase, females preyed primarily on medium‐ (90–200 g) and large‐sized prey (87.7% metabolizeable energy). During the predispersal phase, females exhibited a 4.7‐fold increase in use of small‐sized (