DOI: 10.5061/dryad.26h4q
title: Data from: Prenatal maternal effects appear to be insensitive to experimental or natural environmental variation

description: 1. In many birds, hatching asynchrony is a common phenomenon, primarily
 driven by patterns of incubation behaviour. However, experimental results
 in blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) have shown that asynchrony is reduced
 by intrinsic properties of later eggs that accelerate pre-natal
 development. 2. These intrinsic differences between early and late eggs
 could be driven by changes in resource availability to females, which are
 then passively passed onto the egg. Alternatively, it may be due to an
 anticipatory maternal effect, wherein some signal or resource is actively
 placed within the egg, which is beneficial to those eggs laid late within
 the clutch. 3. In order to distinguish between these hypotheses we
 designed a supplementary feeding experiment, wherein females were provided
 with food at certain times during the laying phase. This had no
 discernible effect on development rate, or other egg characteristics,
 consistent with anticipatory maternal effects. 4. Using a larger data set
 we also tested whether natural environmental variation (weather) during
 egg formation affected maternal investment in eggs. Similarly, egg
 characteristics were found to be relatively insensitive to the
 environmental variation, supporting the experimental results.
description: tEGGSData containing
 information about individual eggs within all nests in the years included
 in the feeding experiment (to analyse hatching time, hatching asynchrony,
 weight, and hatching success)., as well as information about the feeding
 treatments of those nests.NewdatData containing all eggs
 in experimental years (as with data frame tEGGS), augmented with those
 eggs that were not laid (during interruptions in the laying
 sequence)dfNest-level data of those
 years included in the feeding experimenttEGGSallData frame of all eggs included in main weather analyses (hatching time, hatching asynchrony, weight, and hatching success).tEGGSall.augData of all eggs included in the weather analysis, augmented to include those eggs that were not laid (in laying interruptions). Used for pausing analysis.dfallNest level data for all years included in the weather analyses.FeedingModelsScriptR Script for models used to analysis the feeding experimentSpline.FunctionsR Script for setting up varying coefficient splines used in modelsWeather-CGHR Script for carrying out the hatching time analysis on the effects of weatherWeather-ORDHR Script for carrying out the hatching asynchrony (ordinal hatching day) analysis on the effect of weatherWeather-HATSR Script for analysis of the effect of weather on hatching successWeather-WGHTR Script for the analysis of the effect of weather on egg weightWeather-PSER Script for the analysis of the effect of weather on the probability of an egg being laid (pausing analysis)Weather-CSIZER Script for the analysis of the effect of weather on clutch sizeWeather-INCR Script for the analysis of the effect of weather on incubationFeeding-CGH-KExample R script for carrying out K-fold cross-validation of the models. In this case, it is for the model of the effect of the feeding treatment on hatching time (censored Gaussian).