DOI: 10.5061/dryad.w3r22811b
title: Data from: Inbreeding reduces the ability of young to exploit high-resource nurseries

description: Parents of many species create a “nursery” in which young develop, and
 variation in this environment can influence offspring phenotype and
 fitness. Recent studies have demonstrated that behavioral interactions
 within these nurseries may moderate inbreeding depression. However,
 whether other features of the nursery impact inbreeding depression, either
 directly or through secondary impacts on behavior, has been less well
 studied. Here, I describe two experiments involving the burying beetle,
 Nicrophorus orbicollis, in which I test (1) whether inbreeding depression
 is sensitive to the size of the carcass that constitutes the nursery, and
 (2) whether inbreeding and carcass size influence parental care behavior.
 In the first experiment, I found that resource abundance in the nursery
 impacted inbreeding depression in larval mass, a trait that determines
 adult body size and competitive ability. In low-resource nurseries, inbred
 and outbred offspring did not differ in mass. However, in high-resource
 nurseries, inbred larvae were smaller than outbred larvae. This
 inbreeding-by-environment interaction occurred because the mass of outbred
 larvae was more responsive to resource abundance than the mass of inbred
 larvae. Larval survival from dispersal to eclosion exhibited inbreeding
 depression that was independent of resource abundance. In the second
 experiment, I found no evidence that the inability of inbred larvae to
 exploit high-resource nurseries was due to differences in parental
 behavior. These results suggest that inbred larvae are less able than
 outbred larvae to take advantage of high resource nurseries; however,
 further work is necessary to uncover the mechanisms generating this
 inbreeding-by-environment interaction.
description: # Inbreeding reduces the ability of young to exploit high-resource
 nurseries
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.w3r22811b](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.w3r22811b) ## Description of the data and file structure ### Files and variables #### File: experiment.1.data.csv **Description:** Data from the 1st experiment. ##### Variables * pair: a unique identifier for the breeding pair * inbreeding: the inbreeding treatment (i =inbred, o =outbred) * carcass: the carcass size treatment (large or small) * carc.mass: the carcass mass in grams * m.fam: the male family of origin * f.fam: the female family of origin * eggs.max: the maximum number of eggs observed through the bottom of the breeding box (an estimate of clutch size). * brood.size: the number of larvae at dispersal * eclosed.adults: the number of adults that survived to eclosion * brood.mass: the total mass of the larvae at dispersal * mean.mass: the mean mass of dispersing larvae (brood.mass/brood.size) - prop.eclosed: the proportion of dispersed larvae that survived to exclusion (eclosed.adults / brood.size) **File: experiment.2.data.csv** **Description:**  Data from the 2nd experiment. ##### Variables * box: a unique identifier for the breeding pair * inbreeding: the inbreeding treatment (inbred or outbred) * carc.trt: the carcass size treatment (Large or Small) * care: the number of scans during which at least one parent was involved in direct care * obs: the total number of scans conducted * prop.care: the proportion of scans during which at least one parent was involved in direct care (care/obs). * carc.mass: the carcass mass in grams * care: the number of scan samples in which there was direct parental care * obs: the number of scan samples (i.e. the number of observations) * prop.care: the proportion of scan samples in which direct care was observed (care/obs)File: **File:** **carcass.by.inbreeding.analyses.R** **Description:** R code for the analyses and figures of experiments 1 and 2.