Data from: Variation in growth drives the duration of parental care: a test of Ydenberg's model ...

• Main Authors: Elliott, Kyle H., Linnebjerg, Jannie F., Burke, Chantelle, Gaston, Anthony J., Mosbech, Anders, Frederiksen, Morten, Merkel, Flemming
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2017
• Subjects: Behavior antipredator; Life history evolution; Trade offs; Uria lomvia; Life history ecology; thick-billed murre; Life history theory; Common murre; Brunnich's guillemot; Uria aalge; Coats Island; Common Murre; uria
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.kc65r; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.kc65r

The duration of parental care in animals varies widely, from none to lifelong. Such variation is typically thought to represent a trade-off between growth and safety. Seabirds show wide variation in the age at which offspring leave the nest, making them ideal to test the idea that a trade-off between high energy gain at sea and high safety at the nest drives variation in departure age (Ydenberg’s model). To directly test the model assumptions, we attached time-depth recorders to murre parents (fathers [which do all parental care at sea] and mothers; of each). Except for the initial mortality experienced by chicks departing from the colony, the mortality rate at sea was similar to the mortality rate at the colony. However, energy gained by the chick per day was ∼2.1 times as high at sea compared with at the colony because the father spent more time foraging, since he no longer needed to spend time commuting to and from the colony. Compared with the mother, the father spent ∼2.6 times as much time diving per ... : Common Murre data fileDescription of Common Murre data fileMaster_Dives_COMU.txtDaily summary fileIncludes all dives from Coats Island; Daily summary for all birds; meta data associated with all birds.Daily summary.xlsxCoats Island data filesOverwinter dive files for Coats Island42_2_183-189_Overwinter_Files.zip ...