DOI: 10.5061/dryad.0gb5mkmbj
title: Data from: Age interactions influence biparental care behavior and reproductive success

description: Prolonged reproductive interactions can lead to social plasticity and
 fitness differences for a focal individual in response to their partner’s
 characteristics. Age can provide a way to manipulate the influence of a
 social partner due to its predictable consequences for mate quality and
 reproductive effort. Here, we use a full factorial design to examine the
 interactions between male and female age on behavior and reproductive
 performance in the obligately caring, frequently biparental burying beetle
 Nicrophorus orbicollis. We found that both males and females increased
 their reproductive effort with age. However, this response was weaker than
 that of a related, more uniparental species that provides facultative
 care, indicating that details of age-related behavior are predictable
 based on species differences. We also found that male and female behavior
 depended on both their own and their partner’s age, as well as their
 partner’s behavior. Lastly, we found that mismatched age pairs had the
 highest levels of reproductive success. These results indicate that
 reproductive senescence does occur but that it can be mitigated by having
 a young social partner. This also suggests a rarely found pattern wherein
 age-mismatching may have beneficial consequences for both parental and
 offspring fitness. 
description: # Data from: Age interactions influence biparental care behavior and
 reproductive success
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0gb5mkmbj](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0gb5mkmbj) ## Description of the data and file structure This dataset presents measures of parental care behavior and brood success in burying beetle (*Nicrophorus orbicollis*) pairs as a function of male age, female age, and their interaction. ### Files and variables Data is a comma-separated file wherein each row represents a single breeding pair of burying beetles. NA: Not applicable | Brood ID | ID given to each family in the experiment | | :----------------------------------------------------- | :------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | Female ID | Original ID of the female | | Male ID | Original ID of the male | | Setup date | The date of experimental setup | | Setup time | The time of experimental setup | | Male mass  (g) | The mass of the male in grams measured prior to the experiment | | Male pronotum width (mm) | The width of the pronotum of the male | | Female mass (g) | The mass of the female in grams measured prior to the experiment | | Female pronotum width (mm) | The width of the pronotum of the female | | Male eclosion date | The date of male eclosion | | Male age category | The binary age category of the male (O or Y for old or young). | | Female eclosion date | The date of female eclosion | | Female age category | The binary age category of the female (O or Y for old or young). | | Mouse carcass mass (g) | The mass of the mouse carcass prior to the experiment | | Number of larvae at dispersal | The number or surviving larvae that dispersed from the carcass after the period of parental care. | | Average mass of larvae at dispersal (g) | The mean mass of all surviving and dispersing larvae from the brood | | Duration of male care (h) | The time in hours from when larvae hatched until the male was last seen on the carcass. | | Duration of female care (h) | The time in hours from when larvae hatched until the female was last seen on the carcass. | | Male proportion of pre-hatching observations present | The percentage of all possible pre-hatching checks where the male was present. | | Female proportion of pre-hatching observations present | The percentage of all possible pre-hatching checks where the female was present. | | Block | Can be 1, 2, 3, or 4, representing the four blocks in which the experiment was performed. | | Carcass use efficiency | The total mass of the brood divided by the initial mass of the carcass. This metric is meant to capture overall success of parents in turning carcass biomass to larval biomass | | Total number of pre-hatching observations | The number of pre-hatching observations for each brood. Used to generate data for binomial GLMs of pre-hatching care. |