DOI: 10.5061/dryad.2jm63xsxs
title: Data for: Breeding pairs with color aberrations in Oriental reed warblers

description: One pair of Oriental red warblers was found with color aberrations. Two
 videos (ESM Video S1 and Video S2) were provided as supplementary material
 showing Breeding pairs with color aberrations in Oriental reed warblers.
 Our study shows that the breeding pair breed normally and further egg
 experiments indicated they can reject foreign eggs as other breeding
 pairs.
description: Videos were recorded in the field using a mini-video
 recorder.
description: # Breeding pairs with color aberrations in Oriental reed warblers *
 Dataset Contributors: Laikun Ma, Peng Pan, Wei Liu, Jianhua Hou, Wei Liang
 * Address of contributors: 1 School of Life Sciences, Hebei University,
 Baoding 071002, China 2 Department of Biology and Food Science, Hebei
 Normal University for Nationalities, Chengde 067000, China 3 Ministry of
 Education Key Laboratory for Ecology of Tropical Islands, Key Laboratory
 of Tropical Animal and Plant Ecology of Hainan Province, College of Life
 Sciences, Hainan Normal University, Haikou 571158, China * Correspondence:
 Jianhua Hou ([13633325718@163.com](mailto:13633325718@163.com)) and Wei
 Liang ([liangwei@hainnu.edu.cn](mailto:liangwei@hainnu.edu.cn)) * Date of
 Issue: 2024-05-05 * Dataset citation: Ma L, Pan P, Liu W, Hou J, Liang W.
 Data for the article "Breeding pairs with color aberrations in
 Oriental reed warblers", Dryad, Dataset,
 [https://doi.org/](https://doi.org/) * Contextualized in experimental
 procedures and results: In 2017, one pair of Oriental reed warblers
 (*Acrocephalus orientalis*) with color aberrations was video recorded in
 Yongnianwa National Wetland Park, Hebei, China. The female bird exhibited
 white feathers on the head, neck, and upper back, and the base of the beak
 was flesh-red in color. The male had a few feathers on the outer edges of
 the left and right primary wing coverts that were white, which was
 determined to be leucism after analysis. The breeding pairs laid their
 first egg on May 29, with a clutch size of four eggs. After an incubation
 period of 13 days, a chick hatched on June 13, 2017. The nest was found
 empty on June 20 when the chick was seven days old and before fledging
 age; therefore, it was presumed that the chick had been predated. A white
 parrot egg was added to the nest to test the egg recognition ability of
 breeding pairs during incubation and was successfully rejected. To the
 best of our knowledge, this is the first report of color aberrations in
 the Oriental reed warbler, and we found that this color aberrations did
 not affect the reproductive and antiparasitic behavior of the birds, but
 whether it affects their breeding success needs to be further studied. ##
 Description of the data and file structure This dataset include two Video
 files, ESM Video S1 for one breeding pair of the normal Oriental reed
 warbler, with the female trying to peck and reject the experimental blue
 model egg in its nest; and ESM Video S2 for one breeding pair of the
 Oriental reed warbler with color aberrations, with the female trying to
 peck and reject the experimental white model egg in its nest. * File
 count: 2 files * Total file size: 87038 KB * File formats: MP4. ##
 Sharing/Access information * The two video files can be opened using MP3,
 MP4 or Windows Media Player. # Additional Dataset Metadata ##
 Acknowledgements We are grateful to Yongnianwa National Wetland Park of
 Hebei Province, China, for the permission to carry out this study, and
 their support and assistance with fieldwork. This work was supported by
 the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 32101242 to LM, and
 32270526 to WL). ## Dates and Locations * Dates of data collection: Data
 were collected from May to June 2017. * Geographic locations of data
 collection: The study area is located in Yongnianwa National Wetland Park
 (36°40′-36°41′ N, 114°41″-114°45′ E) in Hebei Province, China. #
 Methodological Information * Methods of data collection/generation: see
 manuscript for details.