DOI: 10.5061/dryad.00000008c
title: Data for: The evolution of enclosed nesting in passerines is shaped by competition, energetic costs and predation threat

description: Many bird species breed in enclosed nests which may provide better
 protection against predation and climatic conditions compared to open
 nests and are generally associated with larger clutch sizes and
 slower offspring growth. Here we show that different enclosed nesting
 strategies are each linked to behaviors with very different costs and
 benefits on a macroevolutionary scale. Using a detailed dataset of nest
 structure and location from the order Passeriformes we employed
 phylogenetic comparative methods to evaluate (1) how predation,
 competition, design complexity and energetic costs have shaped
 evolutionary transitions between different nesting strategies and (2)
 whether these strategies also have distinct relationships with
 life-history traits. We find that flexible strategies (i.e., nesting in
 both open and enclosed sites) as well as energetically demanding
 strategies are evolutionarily unstable, indicating the presence of
 underlying ecological trade-offs between anti-predator protections,
 construction costs and competition. We confirm that species with
 enclosed nests have larger clutch sizes and longer development and
 nestling periods compared to open nesters, but only species that construct
 enclosed nests rather than compete for pre-existing
 cavities spend more time incubating and are concentrated in the
 tropics. Flexible strategies prevail in seasonal environments and are
 linked to larger clutches – but not longer development – compared to
 nesting in the open. Overall, our results suggest that predation,
 competition and energetic costs affect the evolution of nesting
 strategies, but via distinct pathways, and that caution is warranted when
 generalizing about the functions of enclosed nest designs in birds.
description: The dataset was collected from literature sources.
description: # The evolution of enclosed nesting in passerines is shaped by
 competition, energetic costs and predation threat: Data
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.00000008c](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.00000008c) This dataset (Supplementary\_Data\_S1.csv) contains information on nest location (n = 4,105) and structure (n = 3,949) for passerine species alongside with a set of life-history, biogeographical and environmental variables associated with each species. ## Description of the data and file structure ### Variable list #### Taxonomy * HBW_name: scientific species names used in Handbook of the Birds of the World or HBW (del Hoyo et al. (2019)) * Tree_name: scientific species names used in Jetz et al. (2012) * HBW_species_common_name: species common names used in HBW * HBW_family: scientific family names used in HBW * HBW_family_common_name: family common names used in HBW #### Life-history traits * Body_mass..g: geometric mean of average mass in g for males and females, except for cases where the mass of only one sex is known (Tobias et al. 2022) * Clutch_size: average clutch size per species (HBW, Birds of North America or BNA (Cornell Lab of Ornithology 2019a), the Neotropical Birds Online or NBO (Cornell Lab of Ornithology 2019b), the Birds of the Western Palearctic or BWP (Cramp et al. 2008)) * Incubation_period..days: average number of days from laying the last egg of the clutch until it hatches (HBW, BNA, NBO, BWP) * Nestling_period..days: average number of days from hatching until leaving the nest (HBW, BNA, NBO, BWP) * Developmental_period..days: sum of incubation and nestling period * Migration_status: non-migratory ('Not a Migrant,'Nomadic') and migratory ('Full Migrant', 'Altitudinal Migrant') strategies from BirdLife International (2019) * Migration_coded: non-migratory - '0', migratory - '1' #### Biogeography * Range_midpoint_latitude: latitude of species' range midpoint (range polygons from BirdLife International (2019)) * N_S: hemisphere of species' range midpoint: Northern ('N') or Southern ('S') * Insularity: score of ‘1’ signifies that more than 90% of species’ range overlaps with landmass shapefiles from GSHHG v2.3.7 (Wessel and Smith 2017) that are smaller than 2,000,000 km2 corresponding to the area of Greenland #### Environment * Mean_temperature: annual mean temperature (BIO1, degrees Celcius) from WorldClim v.2.1 (Fick and Hijmans 2017) * Variation_in_Temperature: annual variation in temperature (BIO7) from WorldClim v.2.1 (Fick and Hijmans 2017) #### Nest type * BayesTraits_location: 4 categories of nest location: (1)'Open', (2)'Facultative Cavity', (3)'Obligate Cavity', (4)'Excavator'. Can be grouped further as open location (category (1)) vs. enclosed location (categories (2)-(4)). HBW, BNA, NBO, BWP, van der Hoek et al. (2017) * BayesTraits_structure: 4 categories of nest structure: (1) 'Open', (2) 'Partial Dome', (3) 'Dome', (4) 'Dome and Tube'. Can be grouped further as open structure (category (1)) vs. enclosed structure (categories (2)-(4)). HBW, BNA, NBO, BWP, van der Hoek et al. (2017) * BPMM_nest_type: 4 categories of nesting strategies included as a discrete explanatory variable in BPMMs (Bayesian Phylogenetic Mixed Models): (1) 'Open' - open nest location and structure, (2) 'Competitive Enclosed'- obligate cavity nesters, (3) 'Non-competitive Enclosed' - excavators and dome nesters (including species building a dome and tube), (4) 'Facultative Enclosed' - facultative cavity nesters and/or partial dome nesters ## Sharing/Access information Data was derived from the following sources: * del Hoyo, J., A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and G. Kirwan (2019). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. [Online.] Available at http://www.hbw.com. * 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. * Tobias, J. A., Sheard, C., Pigot, A. L., Devenish, A. J. M., Yang, J., Sayol, F., Neate-Clegg, M. H. C., Alioravainen, N., Weeks, T. L., Barber, R. A., Walkden, P. A., et al. (2022). AVONET: morphological, ecological and geographical data for all birds. Ecology Letters: 25, 581–597. * Cornell Lab of Ornithology (2019a). The Birds of North America (P. G. Rodewald, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. * Cornell Lab of Ornithology (2019b). Neotropical Birds Online (T. S. Schulenberg, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. * Cramp, S., C. M. Perrins, and K. E. L. Simmons (2008). BWPi 2.0.3: The Birds of the Western Palearctic Interactive - DVD ROM. OUP/BirdGuides Ltd. * BirdLife International (2019). IUCN Red List for Birds. [Online.] Available at http://www.birdlife.org. * Wessel, P., and W. H. F. Smith (2017). GSHHG - A Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Geography Database. Version 2.3.7. [Online] Available at https://www.soest.hawaii.edu/pwessel/gshhg/. * Fick, S. E., and R. J. Hijmans (2017). WorldClim 2: new 1-km spatial resolution climate surfaces for global land areas. International Journal of Climatology 37:4302–4315. * van der Hoek, Y., G. V. Gaona, and K. Martin (2017). The diversity, distribution and conservation status of the tree-cavity-nesting birds of the world. Diversity and Distributions 23:1120–1131.