DOI: 10.5061/dryad.wdbrv1633
title: Data and code from: Parental care liberates juvenile growth: A common-garden test of the evolutionary benefits of care

description: Effects on juvenile growth have long been considered an important benefit
 of parental care, but they have rarely been tested empirically. Protection
 and feeding by parents might accelerate offspring growth by allowing
 offspring to allocate more resources to growth (resource-allocation
 hypothesis). Protected young could shift investment away from defensive
 adaptations towards growth (defensive reallocation), and parental feeding
 should increase the total amount of assimilated resources (energy intake).
 Alternatively, rapid growth can be costly due to damage caused by reactive
 oxygen species, and parental protection might facilitate slower growth to
 avoid this (costly-acceleration hypothesis). We tested these hypotheses
 along with the suggestion that egg and adult size are correlated with
 growth in a common-garden study of 17 species of Silphinae. Our results
 were consistent with the resource-allocation hypothesis but did not
 support the costly-acceleration hypothesis or the idea that egg or adult
 size constrains growth. Species that are normally protected by parents
 grew faster, not slower, than those that are not. This was true even when
 their parents were removed and could not feed, supporting the concept of
 defensive reallocation. As expected based on greater energy intake, the
 young of species with parental feeding grew faster when their parents were
 present than when they were not. When phylogeny was accounted for, neither
 egg nor adult size were related to early growth rate.
description: # Data and code from: Parental care liberates juvenile growth: A
 common-garden test of the evolutionary benefits of care Dataset DOI:
 [10.5061/dryad.wdbrv1633](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.wdbrv1633) ##
 Description of the data and file structure | Data for the Publication |
 **Parental care liberates juvenile growth: a common-garden test of the
 evolutionary benefits of care** | | :----------------------- |
 :----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Authors | Anne-Katrin Eggert – Madlen A. Prang – Alexandra Capodeanu-Nägler – Mamoru Takata – J. Curtis Creighton – Wenbe Hwang – Scott K. Sakaluk – Derek S. Sikes – Ashlee N. Smith – Seizi Suzuki – Stephen T. Trumbo – Lena Zywucki – Sandra Steiger | | Species | *N. americanus, N. defodiens, N. interruptus, N. investigator, N. marginatus, N. nepalensis, N. orbicollis, N. pustulatus, N. quadripunctatus, N. tenuipes, N. tomentosus, N. vespillo, N. vespilloides, P. morio, Ne. americana, O. thoracicum* | | **Experiment Data** | **second data sheet** | | Tribe | Tribe name | | Species | Species name | | Species\_short | Abbreviated species name | | BroodID | The unique identifier of the brood | | Time | The time of weighing of the brood, time measured after time point of allocating the larvae to the carcass. "0" before larvae were allocated to a carcass, and "48" 48 h after the larvae were allocated to a carcass. | | NumberOfLarvae | The size of the initial brood, ranging from 1-15. | | CareType | Parental attendance during the experiment: Larvae were either unattended ("no care"), or they received pre-hatching ("pre only") or full parental care ("full care"). | | Survival | Number of surviving larvae in each brood, at the time of weighing at 48 h "48". NA for larvae at time point "0". | | Average\_LarvalMass | The mean mass of the brood (in mg), calculated by (mass of whole brood/number of weighed larvae). NA for broods with no surviving larvae. | | column LM\_01 to LM\_15 | The mass of each single larvae (in mg), from first larvae (LM\_01) to the last of the 15 larvae (LM\_15). NA values for non-surviving larvae. | | **LifeHistoryTraits** | **third data sheet; DispersalMassUnderNaturalConditions\_mg and EggVolume\_mm3 are unrelated and do not belong to the same individual.** | | Tribe | Tribe name | | Species | Species name | | Species\_short | Abbreviated species name | | AverageDispersalMass\_mg | Average mass of each larvae (in mg) per brood which survived under natural conditions to dispersal in this experiment. Natural conditions equal no parental attendance ("no care") for species of the Silphini and full parental care ("full care") for species of the Nicrophorini. NA was entered when the number of datasets for egg volume and average dispersal mass did not match. In other words, if one trait was available for a species but the corresponding value for the other trait was missing, the entry was marked as NA. | | EggVolume\_mm3 | Egg volume of Silphinae eggs. In Nicrophorini, eggs are ellipsoid-shaped, and we calculated volume as V=1/6 πw\^2 L (Berrigan 1991); for the spherical eggs of the Silphini, we used the formula V=1/6 π((w+L)/2)\^3. The width (w) and length (L) of the eggs were measured using ImageJ. | ### Files and variables #### File: Data-Prang-Parental_feeding_and_defence_of_young_facitlitate_faster_offspring_growth-20230627.xlsx #### File: Prang-Parental care liberates juvenile growth-20250924.Rmd ## Code/software This excel file (.xlsx) contains data from the laboratory described in the article. All data were processed, analysed, and plotted using a custom R Markdown file (.Rmd). ## Usage Notes This is the data file associated with the cooperation experiment. Please check the first sheet in the file for further details regarding the individual columns. The second and third sheet contain the data for the experiment. All data were processed, analysed and plotted using a custom R script (.Rmd file), it is best to use [R Studio](https://posit.co/download/rstudio-desktop/) to read the .Rmd file.  The phylogenetic analyses used the Nexus file from the [TreeBase](https://treebase.org/treebase-web/search/study/summary.html?id=14395) data set published by [Sikes and Venables (2013)](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2013.07.022). We first transformed the Nexus file (ID: Tr96346) with the software [FigTree](http://tree.bio.ed.ac.uk/software/figtree/) into a Newick file with the name "Nicrophorinae_species.nwk", which can be imported to and read by our .Rmd file. see: Sikes, Derek S., and Chandra Venables. Data from: Molecular phylogeny of the burying beetles (Coleoptera: Silphidae: Nicrophorinae), Published Aug 20, 2013 on Dryad. [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.mr221](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.mr221 )