DOI: 10.5061/dryad.jdfn2z3ht
title: Data from: The effect of environmental variation on the relationship between survival and risk-taking behaviour in a migratory songbird

description: Temporal changes in environmental conditions may play a major role in the
 year-to-year variation in fitness consequences of behaviours. Identifying
 environmental drivers of such variation is crucial to understand the
 evolutionary trajectories of behaviours in natural contexts. However, our
 understanding of how environmental variation influences behaviours in the
 wild remains limited. Using data collected over 14 breeding seasons from a
 collared flycatcher (Ficedula albicollis) population, we examined the
 effect of environmental variation on the relationship between survival and
 risk-taking behaviour, a highly variable behavioural trait with great
 evolutionary and ecological significance. Specifically, using annual
 recapture probability as a proxy of survival, we evaluated the specific
 effect of predation pressure, food availability and mean temperature on
 the relationship between annual recapture probability and risk-taking
 behaviour (measured as flight initiation distance, FID). We found a
 negative trend, as the relationship between annual recapture probability
 and FID decreased over the study years, and changed from positive to
 negative. Specifically, in the early years of the study, risk-avoiding
 individuals exhibited a higher annual recapture probability, whereas in
 the later years, risk-avoiders had a lower annual recapture probability.
 However, we did not find evidence that any of the considered environmental
 factors mediated the variation in the relationship between survival and
 risk-taking behaviour.
description: # The effect of environmental variation on the relationship between
 survival and risk-taking behaviour in a migratory songbird
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.jdfn2z3ht](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.jdfn2z3ht) The data underlying this study were collected between 2007 and 2021. In the dataset, each row represents a different Collared flycatcher (Ficedula albicollis) male with information about its identity (i.e., ring), age, territory (i.e., plot and nestbox number), risk-taking behaviour (i.e, FID) and survival to the next year (i.e., recapture probability). The dataset also contains three environmental variables (i.e., predation pressure, temperature and food availability) describing the conditions Collared flycatcher males had to face in a given year. ## Description of the data and file structure Description of the variables: year: year of FID tests date: date of FID tests; e.g., 417 is the 17th of April, and 504 is the 4th of May date_st: standardised date of FID tests (the number of days from the first day in the given year); e.g., 116 is the 116th day in the given year nestbox_id: number of the exact nestbox where the risk-taking behaviour of a Collared flycatcher male was tested plot_id: number of the exact plot where a Collared flycatcher male had its nestbox ring_id: individual identification number of a Collared flycatcher male ring_year: the combination of the individual identification number of a Collared flycatcher male and year of the test age_bin: two age categories: 'juv' (i.e., juveniles, one-year-old males) and 'ad' (i.e., adults, two-year-old males and above) ring_status: 'new' (i.e., a newly ringed male) and 'recap' (i.e., a recaptured male which was already ringed) FID: Flight Initiation Distance (in meters) res_FF: relative FID values, which were estimated as residuals from a linear model that contained the square root of (FID+1), the age of the individual, the standardised date of the behavioural test and the year of the behavioural test as predictor variables. S: a binary variable describing survival to the next year: '0' (i.e., the individual was not recaptured) or '1' (i.e., the individual was recaptured) temp: temperature (in °C), which shows the average value of the mean daily temperatures calculated for each day between the first and last behavioural tests conducted within a given study year (i.e., one temperature estimate per year) pred: predation pressure (in %), which shows the proportion of nests that were partially or fully predated from the egg-laying to the nestling-feeding period to the total number of nests (including all breeding bird species) in each year food: food availability (in grams), which shows the mean of the collected frass mass at the date of the peak of caterpillar biomass food_bin: binarised food availability: '0' (i.e., ordinary year) or '1' (i.e., gradation year, when the population of caterpillars reached extremely high densities, resulting in almost four times higher food supply than the average food availability in other years)