DOI: 10.5061/dryad.bvq83bkkj
title: Latitudinal variations in incubation behaviour among uniparental incubating birds

description: Uniparental incubating birds must resolve the trade-off between
 self-maintenance and incubation. This balance manifests through diverse
 incubation behaviours that vary significantly among species and geographic
 regions. However, limited research has examined the variability of
 incubation behaviours across species and regions. Using Bayesian
 phylogenetic mixed models, we investigated how three incubation behaviours
 (off-bout frequency, off-bout duration, and incubation constancy) vary
 with latitude across 201 uniparental incubating bird species. Our findings
 reveal distinct incubation strategies adopted by uniparental birds across
 latitudes. Species at lower latitudes exhibit fewer off-bouts and,
 meanwhile, have longer off-bout duration. Conversely, those at higher
 latitudes exhibit more frequent but shorter off-bouts. Notably, a clear
 latitude-dependent pattern emerges in incubation constancy, with higher
 latitudes showing greater incubation constancy. Additionally,
 smaller-bodied birds tend to take more frequent off-bouts. Significant
 variations in off-bout frequency were observed across different habitats.
 Herbivorous species, in particular, show higher incubation constancy
 compared to omnivorous and carnivorous birds. These findings offer
 valuable insights into the association of latitudinal variation with
 evolutionary dynamics of life histories in uniparental incubating birds.
description: # Latitudinal Variations in Incubation Behaviour among Uniparental
 Incubating Birds * Name of the journal: Journal of Animal Ecology ##
 Description of the data and file structure * File name: Rawdata.xlsx *
 Description: a file containing scientific names, off-bout duration,
 off-bout frequency, incubation constancy,  clutch size, incubating parent
 body mass and absolute latitude of 201 avian species, as well as
 references to these breeding information. * Format(s): .xlsx * Size(s): 43
 KB * Dimensions: 201 rows x 8 columns * Variables: * Species: scientific
 names for species. * Off-bout duration (min): The mean minutes of all
 recesses taken over multiple days during the incubation period. * Off-bout
 frequency (times): the average number of times that the incubating bird
 left the nest every 24 hours during the incubation period. * Incubation
 constancy (%): the average proportion of time that the incubating bird
 spent on the nest every 24 hours during the incubation period. It was
 calculated as [(Day constancy * Day length hr) + (Night Constancy * Night
 length hr)]/24 hr. * Clutch size: Average clutch size for each species. *
 Body mass (g): Average incubating parent body mass for each species. *
 Absolute latitude (°): Absolute values of latitude for geographic
 coordinates of each species. ## Code/Software Code for the article
 "Latitudinal Variations in Incubation Behaviour among Uniparental
 Incubating Birds" ## Description of the data and file structure *
 File name: Code for_Latitudinal Variations in Incubation Behaviour among
 Uniparental Incubating Birds.R * Description: an R file containing code
 for data quantification, analysis, and visualization in the article
 "Latitudinal Variations in Incubation Behaviour among Uniparental
 Incubating Birds" * Format(s): .R * Software versions: * RStudio
 version 2022.07.0+548 * R version 4.1.2 * Packages used: * ape (Paradis E.
 & Schliep K. 2019. ape 5.0: an environment for modern phylogenetics
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 D. 2023. rtrees: an R package to assemble phylogenetic trees from
 megatrees. Ecography, 2023: e06643.
 [https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.06643](https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.06643))
 * ggtree 3.3.0.900 (Guangchuang Yu. Using ggtree to visualize data on
 tree-like structures. Current Protocols in Bioinformatics, 2020, 69:e96.
 doi: 10.1002/cpbi.96) * treeio 1.25.4 (LG Wang, TTY Lam, S Xu, Z Dai, L
 Zhou, T Feng, P Guo, CW Dunn, BR Jones, T Bradley, H Zhu, Y Guan, Y Jiang,
 G Yu*. treeio: an R package for phylogenetic tree input and output with
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 2020, 37(2):599-603.) * ggtreeExtra 1.4.2 (S Xu, Z Dai, P Guo, X Fu, S
 Liu, L Zhou, W Tang, T Feng, M Chen, L Zhan, T Wu, E Hu, Y Jiang, X Bo, G
 Yu. ggtreeExtra: Compact visualization of richly annotated phylogenetic
 data. Molecular Biology and Evolution. 2021, 38(9):4039-4042.) * car
 3.0.11 (John Fox and Sanford Weisberg (2019). An {R} Companion to Applied
 Regression, Third Edition. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage. URL:
 [https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Books/Companion/](https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Books/Companion/)) * phytools 0.7.90 (Revell, L. J. (2012) phytools: An R package for phylogenetic comparative biology (and other things). Methods Ecol. Evol. 3 217-223. doi:10.1111/j.2041-210X.2011.00169.x) * MCMCglmm (Hadfield, J.D. (2010). MCMC methods for multi-response generalized linear mixed models: the MCMCglmm R package. Journal of Statistical Software, 33, 1-22.) * geiger 2.0.7 (Pennell Matthew W, Jonathan M Eastman, Graham J Slater, Joseph W Brown, Josef C Uyeda, Richard G FitzJohn, Michael E Alfaro, and Luke J Harmon. 2014. geiger v2.0: an expanded suite of methods for fitting macroevolutionary models to phylogenetic trees. Bioinformatics 30:2216-2218.) * tibble 3.1.6 (Müller K, Wickham H (2021). *tibble: Simple Data Frames*. R package version 3.1.6, [https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=tibble](https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=tibble).)