DOI: 10.5061/dryad.k0p2ngfjr
title: Behavioural predictability in chickens in response to anxiogenic stimuli is influenced by maternal corticosterone levels during egg formation

description: Across species, prenatal maternal stress has been shown to create
 heterogeneity in behavioural phenotypes. Recently research has highlighted
 that individuals vary in how predictable they are in their behavioural
 responses. This within-individual variation in behaviour is likely to be
 of biological importance, since individuals interact with the world not
 only through their mean behavioural phenotype, but also through their
 extremes. Yet, the underlying mechanism that creates and constraints
 between individual variation in behavioural predictability remains largely
 unexplored. Here we estimate if prenatal maternal stress can cause
 variation in behavioural predictability in a population of chickens, by
 quantifying offsprings behaviour repeatedly (16 times) in a standard
 anxiety test (open-field test). Prenatal maternal stress resulted in less
 anxious and more predictable individuals than control individuals.
 Demonstrating for the first time that prenatal maternal stress underlies
 multi-hierarchical behavioural plasticity by influencing both the
 magnitude of the behavioural response as well as the predictability of the
 behavioural response. These results not only expand our current knowledge
 about the ways prenatal stress can affect behavioural phenotypes but also
 suggest a possible proximate mechanism underlying within population
 variation in individual behavioural predictability.
description: # Behavioural predictability in chickens in response to anxiogenic stimuli
 is influenced by maternal corticosterone levels during egg formation
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.k0p2ngfjr](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.k0p2ngfjr) ## Description of the data and file structure The data and code in this folder belong to the study detailed in the manuscript "Chickens exposed to prenatal maternal stress are more predictable in their behavioural response to anxious stimuli than non-stressed pen-mates". NOTE: -The data has been processed for ease of use and analysis. -All code and analysis were run and working under R version 4.4.0. -Two files with data are provided in rds format to be imported into R: Eggweights.data.rds. PNMSPred.data.rds -Package requirements to run the code are listed at the start of the code. -Any custom function used in the analysis is included within the code. ### Files and variables #### File: EggWeights.data.rds **Description:** Contains information about the subjects treated with either corticosterone or placebo subcutaneous implants, a family ID, and weights of eggs collected from day 1 to day 12 after implantation. #### File: PNMSPred.data.rds **Description:** Contains data on the offspring of the artificially stressed mothers and the two scored mentioned in the article that were recorded during a series of open-field tests. Data on the time spent at the edge of the arena is measured in seconds, while distance travelled throughout the test is measured in centimeters. Additionally, information about the offspring's weight in the egg, as well as at time of hatching is included. This weight information extends to the days 15, 36, 47, and 224 of age. Sex and treatment information is also included, as well as a unique identifier per individual. There is a total of 16 records per individual. ## Code/software All code and analysis were run and working under R version 4.4.0. Both datasets are stored as R data serialization objects (.rds), meant to be imported in a format-ready state via Data.Object &lt;- readRDS("Data.rds") Packages required to run the code are: bestNormalize ([link](https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/bestNormalize/index.html)) tidyverse package collection ([link](https://www.tidyverse.org/)) ggpubr ([link](https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/ggpubr/index.html)) hglm ([link](https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/hglm/index.html)) patchwork ([link](https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/patchwork/index.html)) ### Change Log **Sept 2025**: Title changed. Data unaltered.