Data from: Early mortality saves energy: estimating the energetic cost of excess offspring in a seabird ...

• Main Authors: Vedder, Oscar, Zhang, He, Bouwhuis, Sandra
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2017
• Subjects: age-specific mortality; Brood survival; brood reduction; offspring survival; parent-offspring conflict; chick growth; 1992-2005; Parental neglect; Chick mortality; Sterna hirundo; Common tern
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.6ck7g; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.6ck7g

Offspring are often produced in excess as insurance against stochastic events or unpredictable resources. This strategy may result in high early-life mortality, yet age-specific mortality before offspring independence and its associated costs have rarely been quantified. In this study, we modelled age-specific survival from hatching to fledging using 24 years of data on hatching order (HO), growth and age of mortality of more than 15 000 common tern (Sterna hirundo) chicks. We found that mortality peaked directly after hatching, after which it declined rapidly. Mortality hazard was best described with the Gompertz function, and was higher with later HO, mainly due to differences in baseline mortality hazard, rather than age-dependent mortality. Based on allometric mass–metabolism relationships and detailed growth curves of starving chicks, we estimated that the average metabolizable energy intake of non-fledged chicks was only 8.7% of the metabolizable energy intake of successful chicks during the nestling ... : Raw data chick survival and growth (1992-2015)Data on common tern chick survival and mass growth between 1992 and 2015 collected in the Bantersee research colony in Wilhelmshaven, Germany. ...