DOI: 10.5061/dryad.v15dv424g
title: Nest construction and its effect on post-hatching family life in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides

description: Through the effort required to construct them, the microenvironmental
 conditions they impose on the family and their indirect influence on
 post-hatching care, nests play a key role in influencing family life. We
 combined experimental evolution with cross-fostering experiments on
 laboratory populations of Nicrophorus vespilloides to investigate three
 ways in which the nest can contribute more broadly to parental investment.
 We used replicate populations of N. vespilloides that had evolved for 42
 generations under contrasting regimes of care. Populations were either
 able to supply post-hatching care (“Full Care”) or prevented from
 supplying any post-hatching care (“No Care”). Research on these
 populations has previously shown that the No Care populations evolved to
 build rounder nests, more rapidly, by Generation 14. Here we found: 1)
 larvae raised by Full Care parents on nests prepared by parents from the
 No Care population did not attain a higher mass by the end of larval
 development than larvae in other treatments. However, we did discover
 that: 2) cross-fostering nests between families consistently reduced
 larval mass – and to a similar extent whether nests were cross-fostered
 between or within the populations. We suggest that cross-fostering
 disrupted the chemical environment on and around the nest since we found
 no evidence that 3) nests mediate interactions between males and females.
 The duration of paternal care was consistently shorter than the duration
 of maternal care, and even shorter for males from the No Care populations
 than males from the Full Care populations. Nevertheless, the duration of
 male care did not predict variation in duration of female care. In short,
 although the nest is the substrate for burying beetle family life, we
 found little evidence that it had evolved divergently in our experimental
 populations to influence parental investment.
description: # Bladon EK & Kilner RM (2024). Nest construction and its effect on
 post-hatching family life in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides.
 [https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.03.29.587327](https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.03.29.587327) Comments and requests should be addressed to Eleanor Bladon: [ekr23@cam.ac.uk](mailto:ekr23@cam.ac.uk) or [eleanor.bladon@gmail.com](mailto:eleanor.bladon@gmail.com) # Description of the data and file structure Details of data collection methods for each of the datasets can be found in the manuscript listed above. The data set contains the following columns: *Block - Experimental block 1 or 2 *Treatment - NCwFCMouse = a pair of beetles from a No Care evolutionary population given a carcass nest prepared by a pair of beetles from a Full Care population, FCwNCMouse = a pair of beetles from a Full Care evolutionary population given a carcass nest prepared by a pair of beetles from a No Care population, NCwNCMouse = a pair of beetles from a No Care evolutionary population given a carcass nest prepared by a different pair of beetles from the same No Care population, FCwFCMouse = a pair of beetles from a Full Care evolutionary population given a carcass nest prepared by a different pair of beetles from the same Full Care population, NCSameMouse = a pair of beetles from a No Care evolutionary population left with the mouse that they prepared themselves, FCSameMouse = a pair of beetles from a Full Care evolutionary population left with the mouse that they prepared themselves. *BoxNo - ID given to parental pairings for breeding. *Residents - Type of experimental evolution population (NC = No Care, FC = Full Care) of the focal parents. *PreparedBy - Type of experimental evolution population (NC = No Care, FC = Full Care) of the pair that prepared the carcass that the residents are raising their brood on. *OriginalMouseMass - Mass in grams of carcass (as weighed at the start of the experiment) originally given to this pair of beetles for breeding. *MaleID *FemaleID *TransferredTo - The box that the carcass nest that the focal parents prepared was transferred to. The letters denote whether the recipient pair was NC (No Care) or FC (Full Care), and the number is the recipients' box ID as noted in the "BoxNo" column". NA indicates that the carcass nest was not transferred. *MouseTransfer - Were carcass nests swapped in this brood? "Y" if yes, "N" if no. *NewMouseMass - Mass in grams of the carcass (as weighed at the start of the experiment) given to this pair of beetles for breeding after the transfer was complete. If their carcass nest was not transferred this number will be the same as in the "OriginalMouseMass" column. *BroodSize - Number of larvae at dispersal. *BroodMass - Mass in grams of larvae at dispersal. *MaleDuration - The number of hours after the experiment started (parents were paired) that the male parent was found in the escape chamber (see paper for details of check protocol). *FemDuration - The number of hours after the experiment started (parents were paired) that the female parent was found in the escape chamber (see paper for details of check protocol). *LowerMaleDeparture - Since the checks were done at intervals (see paper for details of check protocol), adults that were found in the escape chamber at a check could have left anytime between the last check and the current check. As the survival models presented in the paper were interval censored, they required a lower potential leaving time (just after the last check) and an upper potential leaving time (just before the current check). This, and the next three columns provide these data. *UpperMaleDeparture - See "LowerMaleDeparture" explanation. *LowerFemDeparture - See "LowerMaleDeparture" explanation. *UpperFemDeparture - See "LowerMaleDeparture" explanation.