DOI: 10.5061/dryad.wh70rxwsd
title: Offspring overcome poor parenting by being better parents

description: The evolutionary repercussions of parental effects—the impact of the
 developmental environment provided by parents on offspring—are often
 discussed as static effects that can have negative influences on offspring
 fitness that may even persist across generations. However, individuals are
 not passive recipients and may mitigate the persistence of parental
 effects through their behaviour. Here, we tested how the burying
 beetle, Nicrophorus orbicollis, a species with complex parental
 care, responded to poor parenting. We cross-fostered young manipulated the
 duration of parental care received and measured the impact on traits of
 both F1 and F2 offspring to experimentally extricate the effect of poor
 parenting from other parental effects. As expected, reducing parental care
 negatively affected traits that are ecologically important for burying
 beetles, including F1 offspring development time and body size. However,
 F1 parents who received reduced care as larvae spent more time feeding F2
 offspring than parents who received full care as larvae. As a result, both
 the number and mass of F2 offspring were unaffected by the developmental
 experience of their parents. Our results show that flexible parental care
 may be able to overcome poor developmental environments and limit negative
 parental effects to a single generation.
description: We conducted manipulations of the developmental environment by
 providing some beetles with reduced post-hatching parental care (6 hours)
 or full post-hatching parental care (7-9 days). We determined how reducing
 parental care influenced the duration of developmental stages, survival,
 larval mass, and adult body size. We then determined how the developmental
 experience of these larvae in adulthood - those that received full or
 reduced care - influenced the same traits of their offspring when these
 individuals became parents. We further determined how developmental
 experience impacted parental care behavior when young became parents
 themselves.
description: # Offspring overcome poor parenting by being better parents in
 *Nicrophorus orbicollis* --- In this study, we manipulated the duration of
 parental care that young of the burying beetle *Nicrophorus orbicollis*
 received, such that beetles received full (7-9 days) or reduced (six
 hours) parental care. These data include the impact of full or reduced
 care on offspring development and life history ("F1 Parental Family
 Data"), and also how manipulating the parental care that beetles
 received impacted their behavior when they reached adulthood and the
 impact on the development of F2 offspring ("F2 Life History and
 Parental Care Conditions"). ## Description of the Data and file
 structure ### **F1 Parental Family Data** This dataset includes the
 effects of manipulating the duration of parental care received (full or
 reduced) on the development and life history of *Nicrophorus orbicollis*.
 Data are provided as both an Excel and a CSV file to increase
 accessibility. Explanation of empty cells in different fields: *
 "mouse mass": mouse mass is only included once per family, so
 cells will be empty for all additional family members. * "larva
 sex": field empty if larva did not survive to eclosion when the sex
 of individuals can be determined. * "time dispersal from mouse to
 pupal stage", "time pupae to eclosion", "total
 development time": empty if the individual did not survive for the
 entire duration of those periods. * "individual pronotum length as an
 adult": field empty if the beetle did not survive until the adult
 stage when beetles could be measured. ### **F2 Life History and Parental
 Care Conditions** This dataset includes the effects of manipulating the
 duration of parental care received (full or reduced) on offspring when
 they have reached adulthood. The first tab, "F2 Parental Care
 Conditions", includes data on how long parents provided care and the
 number and mass of F2 offspring. The second tab, "Parental Behav of
 F1 to F2", included data on the proportion of observation time that
 parents who received full or reduced care themselves spent engaging in
 different kinds of parental care behaviors. Data are provided as both an
 Excel and a CSV file to increase accessibility. Explanation of empty cells
 in different fields: * "sex of deserter": field empty if neither
 of the parents deserted the carcass * "did focal parent show parental
 care behavior during observation": field empty if the focal parent
 had deserted before observation. * "days from egg to when focal
 parent abandoned": empty if the parent did not abandon * "length
 larval development on carcass", "number of larva
 dispersed", "average larval mass", "direct care",
 "indirect care", "total time spent on carcass"; these
 fields are empty if larvae did not survive, eggs did not hatch, or if the
 focal parent deserted, as indicated by previous fields.