DOI: 10.5061/dryad.7h44j102c
title: Data from: The transgenerational consequences of paternal social isolation and predation exposure in threespined sticklebacks

description: Parents routinely encounter stress in the ecological environment that can
 affect offspring development (transgenerational plasticity: TGP); however,
 parents’ interactions with conspecifics may alter how parents respond to
 ecological stressors. During social buffering, the presence of
 conspecifics can reduce the response to or increase the speed of recovery
 from a stressor. This may have cascading effects on offspring if
 conspecifics can mitigate parental responses to ecological stress in ways
 that blunt the transmission of stress-induced transgenerational effects.
 Here, we simultaneously manipulated both paternal social isolation and
 experience with predation risk prior to fertilization in threespined
 stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus). We generated offspring via in-vitro
 fertilization to allow us to isolate paternal effects mediated via sperm
 alone (i.e., in the absence of paternal care). If social buffering
 mitigates TGP induced by paternal exposure to predation risk, then we
 expect the transgenerational effects of predation exposure to be weaker
 when a conspecific is present compared to when the father is isolated.
 Offspring of predator-exposed fathers showed reduced anxiety-like behavior
 and tended to be captured faster by the predator. Fathers who were
 socially isolated also had offspring that were captured faster by a live
 predator, suggesting that paternal social isolation may have maladaptive
 effects on how offspring respond to ecological stressors. Despite additive
 effects of paternal social isolation and paternal predation risk, we found
 no evidence of an interaction between these paternal treatments,
 suggesting that the presence of a conspecific did not buffer fathers
 and/or offspring from the effects of predation risk. Our results suggest
 that socially-induced stress is an important, yet underappreciated,
 mediator of TGP and can elicit transgenerational effects even in species
 that do not form permanent social groups. Future studies should therefore
 consider how the parental social environment can affect both within and
 trans-generational responses to ecological stressors.
description: In a full-factorial experiment, we exposed stickleback fathers to
 predation risk when they were isolated or had a male neighbor, to test
 whether the transgenerational effects of predation exposure could be
 socially buffered. We then generated offspring and assayed them for
 behavior (shoaling and scototaxis) as well as survival against a live
 predator. 
description: # The transgenerational consequences of paternal social isolation and
 predation exposure in threespined sticklebacks
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.7h44j102c](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.7h44j102c) We include 3 datasets and R files - each one corresponds to a separate offspring assay (scototaxis, shoaling, and survival). ## Description of the data and file structure All 3 datasets contain information about the fish ID, the clutch it came from, paternal predator treatment (visual 'yes' is predator-exposed, visual 'no' is control), paternal neighbor treatment, length (in mm), and mass (in g). The scototaxis file also contains additional columns for assay tank, tank orientation (black side on left or right), observer (the individual who scored the video file), time to enter the white section, how many times the fish switched sides, thigmotaxis in the white section, and total time in the white section. The shoaling file was used to analyze length and mass, and contains additional columns for age of the fish (in days), observer, and shoaling assay tank as well as time spent in the gravel, oriented to the shoal, in the plants, and shoaling. The survival file contains additional columns for assay number, time of trial, whether the fish survived, the survival time, observer, the assay pool, and trout ID.  ## Code/Software Contained are annotated R files for each assay, containing code for cleaning up the dataset and running the MCMCglmm models that are presented in the paper.