DOI: 10.5061/dryad.3bk3j9kr9
title: Data from: Rapid decline of prenatal maternal effects with age is independent of postnatal environment in a precocial bird

description: Maternal effects are an important source of phenotypic variation with
 potentially large fitness consequences, but how their importance varies
 with the quality of the environment across an individual’s ontogeny is
 poorly understood. We bred Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) of known
 pedigree and experimentally manipulated the quality of offspring diet to
 estimate the importance of prenatal maternal effects in shaping variation
 in body mass from hatching to adulthood. Maternal genetic effects on body
 mass at hatching were strong, and largely caused by variation in egg mass,
 but their importance rapidly declined with age. Whereas there was a large
 effect of diet on growth, this did not affect the decline of maternal
 effects variance. The importance of additive genetic and residual variance
 increased with age, with the latter being considerably larger in the poor
 diet treatment. Hence, we found no evidence for prenatal maternal effect
 by postnatal environment interactions, and that prenatal maternal effects
 are rapidly replaced by direct additive genetic and residual effects when
 offspring start to develop outside the egg. Thereby these results shed new
 light on the dynamics of the role of maternal versus offspring genes
 across ontogeny and environments.
description: Body mass data of Japanese quail chicks, fed with either a
 standard or a poor quality diet, was collected by by weighing individuals
 at standard ages with weekly intervals after hatching, until 12 weeks old.
 Pedigree data was collected by up to 12 generations of selective pairwise
 mating.
description: All files can be opened in R.
description: This repository contains data files and R-codes used for a project on
 quantitative genetics of maternal effects and genotype-by-environment
 interactions using data from a population of captive Japanese quails.
 Specifically, the repository contains files used in the following study:
 Vedder O, Tschirren B, Postma E, Moiron M; Rapid decline of prenatal
 maternal effects with age is independent of postnatal environment in a
 precocial bird. 2023 Evolution (preprinted in bioRxiv with doi:
 10.1101/2023.05.26.542383) For any further information on statistical
 analyses, please contact: Maria Moiron, email: mariamoironc@gmail.com For
 any further information on data, please contact: Oscar Vedder, email:
 oscar.vedder@ifv-vogelwarte.de growth\_model.text This file contains the
 phenotypic data used for an univariate animal model testing for the effect
 of diet on the body mass growth of Japanese quails, reported in Table S2.
 offspring.ID: individual offspring unique identifier mother.ID: individual
 mother unique identifier father.ID: individual father unique identifier
 year: year of the experiment (i.e., of measurement) \&gt;
 mother\.type: category variable with two levels: high and low\,
 representing the two different maternal selection lines\. father.type:
 category variable with two levels: high and low, representing the two
 different paternal selection lines. mother.replicate: categorical variable
 with two levels: 1 and 2, representing the two maternal line replicates
 used in the experiment. father.replicate: categorical variable with two
 levels: 1 and 2, representing the two paternal line replicates used in the
 experiment. f: inbreeding coefficient of each individual offspring
 chick.diet: category of the diet treatment that each offspring was
 assigned to, two levels: standard and poor chick.sex: sex of each
 individual offspring (being 1 = males) mass: body mass measured in grams
 age: age of the individual offspring, measured in days after hatching
 (being 0 = hatching, 7= seven days old, and so on)
 maternal\_by\_environment\_interactions.txt This file contains the
 phenotypic data used in a series bivariate animal models testing for
 maternal by environment interactions, reported in Table S3 and S4.
 offspring.ID: individual offspring unique identifier mother.ID: individual
 mother unique identifier father.ID: individual father unique identifier
 year: year of the experiment (i.e., of measurement) mother.type: category
 variable with two levels: high and low, representing the two different
 maternal selection lines. father.type: category variable with two levels:
 high and low, representing the two different paternal selection lines.
 mother.replicate: categorical variable with two levels: 1 and 2,
 representing the two maternal line replicates used in the experiment.
 father.replicate: categorical variable with two levels: 1 and 2,
 representing the two paternal line replicates used in the experiment. f:
 inbreeding coefficient of each individual offspring chick.diet: category
 of the diet treatment that each offspring was assigned to, two levels:
 standard and poor chick.sex: sex of each individual offspring (being 1 =
 males) mass.d0: body mass measured in grams at day 0 (i.e., at hatching)
 mass.d7: body mass measured in grams at day 7 from hatching mass.d14: body
 mass measured in grams at day 14 from hatching mass.d21: body mass
 measured in grams at day 21 from hatching mass.d28: body mass measured in
 grams at day 28 from hatching mass.d35: body mass measured in grams at day
 35 from hatching mass.d42: body mass measured in grams at day 42 from
 hatching mass.d49: body mass measured in grams at day 49 from hatching
 mass.d56: body mass measured in grams at day 56 from hatching mass.d63:
 body mass measured in grams at day 63 from hatching mass.d70: body mass
 measured in grams at day 70 from hatching mass.d77: body mass measured in
 grams at day 77 from hatching mass.d84: body mass measured in grams at day
 84 from hatching pedigree.txt This file contains the pedigree for a
 captive population of Japanese quails. Headings follow the norm for
 pedigrees and are self-explanatory.