DOI: 10.5061/dryad.sqv9s4n27
title: Brain size and life history variables in birds

description: The database contains information on brain size, body mass, life-history
 traits and development mode for a total of 620 bird species. The taxonomy
 follows Jetz et. al. (2012). For life-history the database includes
 information for the following six variables: clutch size, egg size,
 incubation period, fledging age, maximum longevity; as well as development
 mode (altricial, semialtricial, precocial and semiprecocial).
 Additionally, in most cases there is information about the origin or the
 sampled specimen (captivity vs wild origin), quality control, and a
 nominal estimate of the sample size, all referring to the maximum
 longevity data.
description: The compiled data for brain
 size comes from the sources listed in reference 1. The data for body size
 and life history variables were collected from Iwaniuk and Nelson (2003),
 Myhrvold et. al., (2015), and Tacutu et. al., 2013. As no single database
 had complete information available for the variables of interest, we
 merged the information between databases in order to get the most complete
 set of variables for each species. References: 
 Iwaniuk, A. N. & Nelson,  J.E. (2003) Can. J. Zool. 81:
 1913-1928; Armstrong, E. & Bergeron, R. (1985) Relative brain size
 and metabolism in birds. Brain Behav. Evol. 26: 141-153; Boire, D.
 & Baron, G. (1994) Allometric comparison of brain and main
 subdivisions in birds. J. Brain Res. 35: 4966; Garamszegi et al (2002)
 Proc. R. Soc. B. 269, 961-967; Garamszegi et al (2005) Proc. R. Soc. B.
 272, 159-166; Mlikovsky, J. (1989) Brain size in birds 3: Columbiformes
 through Piciformes; Mlikovsky, J. (1989) Brain size in birds 2:
 Falconiformes through Gaviiformes; Mlikovsky, J. (1989) Brain size in
 birds 1: Tinamiformes through Ciconiiformes; Mlikovsky, J. (1990) Brain
 size in birds 4: Passeriformes; Crile, G. & Quiring, D.P. (1940) A
 record of the body weight and certain organ and gland weight of 3690
 animals. Ohio J. Sci. 40: 219-259; Burish, M.J.,  Kueh, H.Y. &
 Wang, S-H. S. (2002) Brain architecture and social complexity in modern
 and ancient birds. Brain Behav. Evol. 63: 107-124; Ferran Sayol, Joan
 Maspons, Oriol Lapiedra, Andrew N. Iwaniuk, Tama´s Szekely &
 Daniel Sol (2016). Environmental variation and the evolution of large
 brains in birds. Nature Communications. 7:13971
 Iwaniuk, A. N., and J. E. Nelson. 2003. Developmental
 differences are correlated with relative brain size in birds: a
 comparative analysis. Can. J. Zool. 81:1913–1928.
 Jetz, W., G. H. Thomas, J. B. Joy, K. Hartmann, and A. O.
 Mooers. 2012. The global diversity of birds in space and time. Nature
 491:444–448 Myhrvold NP, Baldridge E, Chan B, Sivam
 D, Freeman DL, Ernest SKM. 2015 An amniote life-history database to
 perform comparative analyses with birds , mammals , and reptiles. Ecology
 96, 3109 Tacutu
 R, Craig T, Budovsky A, Wuttke D, Lehmann G, Taranukhe D, Costa J,
 Fraifeld VE, de Magalhães P. 2013 Human Ageing Genomic Resources :
 Integrated databases and tools for the biology and genetics of ageing.
 Nucleic Acids Res. 41, 1027–1033. (doi:10.1093/nar/gks1155)
description: The databse was filtered based on the quality of the longevity
 data prior to analyses.