DOI: 10.5061/dryad.6sm82
title: Data from: Butterflies do not alter conspecific avoidance in response to variation in density

description: High conspecific densities are associated with increased levels of
 intraspecific competition and a variety of negative effects on
 performance. However, changes in life history strategy could compensate
 for some of these effects. For instance, females in crowded conditions
 often have fewer total offspring, but they may invest more in each one.
 Such investment could include the production of larger offspring, more
 time spent engaging in parental care, or more choosy decisions about where
 offspring are placed. For animals that have a relatively immobile juvenile
 stage, the costs of competition can be particularly high. Females may be
 able to avoid such costs by investing more in individual reproductive
 decisions, rearing young or laying eggs in locations away from other
 females. We tested the hypothesis that conspecific density cues during
 juvenile and adult life stages lead to changes in life history strategy,
 including both reproduction and oviposition choices. We predicted that
 high-density cues during the larval and adult stages of female Pieris
 rapae butterflies lead to lower fecundity but higher conspecific avoidance
 during oviposition, compared to similar low-density cues. We used a 2×2
 factorial design to examine the effects of low and high conspecific
 density during the larval and adult stages of butterflies on avoidance
 behavior and fecundity. We found that past information about conspecific
 density did not matter; all butterflies exhibited similar levels of
 fecundity and a low level of conspecific avoidance during oviposition
 regardless of their previous experience as larvae and adults. These
 results suggest that P. rapae females use a fixed, rather than flexible,
 conspecific avoidance strategy when making oviposition decisions, and past
 information about conspecific density has no effect on life history and
 current reproductive investment. We speculate that this may be partially
 because past conspecific density per se is not a reliable cue for
 predicting current density and levels of competition, and thus it does not
 affect the development of life history strategies in this system.
description: Butterfly behavioral and
 fecundity data in response to density manipulationThis file contains data
 about egg-laying behavior and fecundity in response to variation in
 conspecific density (high and low) during the larval and adult stages of
 Pieris rapae butterflies. There are two sheets in the Excel file: one
 called "Behavioral Assay" and one called "Fecundity".
 Both sheets have data for all 48 individual butterflies included in the
 dataset in the published paper, and both have an "ID" column.
 The "ID" is the ID# for each individual butterfly and allows for
 cross-reference between sheets, if it is necessary to get both the
 behavioral and fecundity data for the same individual. Both sheets have
 "LarvalTreatment" and "AdultTreatment" columns, which
 identify whether the individual was in a "Five" or
 "One" treatment during each life stage, larval or adult.
 "Five" means that the individual was with four other
 conspecifics during that stage (five total individuals, high conspecific
 density), and "One" means that the individual was alone (one
 total individual, low conspecific density). The Behavioral Assay sheet has
 data for the number of eggs laid by individual butterflies on cabbage
 leaves with zero or three conspecific models, for each of three days. The
 Fecundity sheet shows fecundity data. "Fecundity" is a column in
 the sheet and equals the total number of eggs laid by an individual during
 the three days of the behavioral assay plus the number of dissected
 eggs.DRYAD_CompData.xlsx