Table 3a:

Candidate models that were most supported (∆AIC_C = 0.00) for predicting the age class (immature or adult) of 86 male brown bears. Each model was the outcome of one of four individual analyses^a. For the first three analyses, we used different age thresholds (≥3, ≥4 or ≥5 years) for adulthood while retaining all records in the data set. For the final analysis, we re-analysed the data set that was used for the most supported model (∆AIC_C = 0.00), but excluded the records for bears at the threshold age (in this case, 3 years old)

Adult age (y)	N	Model	Most supported model structureb	K	AICC	∆AICC	wi	Accuracy (%)
≥3	86	Hormone + time	test + (cort × d) + cort3 + (prog × est3)	9	64.87	0.00	0.97	88.4
≥5	86	Hormone + contact method	(test × cm) + prog	7	65.33	0.46	0.87	83.7
≥4	86	Hormone + contact method	test + (cort × cm) + cort2 + (prog × cm)	11	71.89	7.02	0.41	86.1
Model based on reduced data set excluding records for 3-year-old bears
≥3	80	Hormone + contact method	(test × cm) + (est3 × cm) + cort2	10	61.14	0.00	0.55	87.5

^aStatistics are number of estimable parameters in model (K), sample-size-adjusted Akaike information criterion (AIC_C), difference in AIC_C between top model and model i (∆AIC_C), Akaike weight (w_i) and accuracy (%).

^bVariables are testosterone (test), progesterone (prog), estradiol (est), cortisol (cort), ordinal day (d) and contact method (cm).