DOI: 10.5061/dryad.v6wwpzh46
title: Data from: Snowmelt and laying date shape the parental care strategy of a high-Arctic shorebird

description: Parental care varies across animal taxa, from uniparental to biparental
 care, driven by ecological and social factors such as weather, food
 availability, predation, and partner availability. Understanding this
 diversity within species can reveal biotic and abiotic conditions allowing
 uniparental versus biparental strategies. This study examines the impact
 of biotic and abiotic factors on parental care strategies in Sanderlings
 (Calidris alba), one of the few species that uses both types of care.
 Using long-term data from Greenland (2011-2023), path analyses revealed
 that laying date and snowmelt influence parental care strategies, with
 indirect climatic effects during migration and on breeding grounds. We
 observed a greater proportion of uniparental nests in years with delayed
 laying dates, and a greater proportion of biparental nests in years with
 delayed snowmelt. These findings underscore the complex interplay between
 environmental factors and parental care strategies, offering insights into
 how these strategies may evolve under changing ecological conditions.
description: The dataset comes from a long-term field study based in
 Greenland. Sanderlings' nests are equipped with thermologgers, i.e.,
 TinyTag to record temperatures during the incubation. This allows to infer
 the parental care strategy, biparental or uniparental of each nest, laying
 date, abundance, and predation pressure. Climatic variables were extracted
 from different sources (meteorological stations, satelite...). We
 processed all data with R.
description: # Snowmelt and laying date shape the parental care strategy of a
 High-Arctic shorebird
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.v6wwpzh46](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.v6wwpzh46) This metadata file contains information on the dataset ‘data_Etchart_strategy’ from the paper ‘Snowmelt and laying date shape the parental care strategy of a High-Arctic shorebird’. Each row of this dataset refers to a unique nest. In each column, information on unique nests are given. ·       Year: Year the nest was found. ·       Nest_id: unique combined ID of the nest, composed of the first four letters of the species name (SAND), the year, and the field nest ID. ·       Strategy: description of the nest’s parental care strategy; UNI if the nest is uniparental, i.e., one single parent incubates; BI if both parents incubate. ·       Relative_abundance: Total number of Sanderling nest found in the study area per year (/km²). ·       Nao_may: Global climatic conditions during the peak migration month (May) of Sanderlings, represented with the North Atlantic Oscillation index. ·       Local_temperature: Mean of the residuals of the relationship Daily temperature (°C) ~ Julian date of each monitored nest the 15-days prior to the laying. Represents the pre-laying conditions of each bird. ·       Laying_date: Date on which the first egg in each nest was laid. ·       Snow_cover: Julian date of 50% snow cover per year in our study area. ·       Predation: Index representing the yearly predation pressure. ·       Dummy_strat: Dummy variable of the strategy column, with biparental nests = 0 and uniparental nests = 1.