Data from: Female reproduction bears no survival cost in captivity for grey mouse lemurs

The survival cost of reproduction has been revealed in many free-ranging vertebrates. However, recent studies on captive populations failed to detect this cost. Theoretically, this lack of survival/reproduction trade-off is expected when resources are not limiting, but these studies may have failed to detect the cost, as they may not have fully accounted for potential confounding effects, in particular inter-individual heterogeneity. Here we investigated the effects of current and past reproductive effort on later survival in captive females of a small primate, the grey mouse lemur. Survival analyses showed no cost of reproduction in females; and the pattern was even in the opposite direction: the higher the reproductive effort, the higher the chances of survival until the next reproductive event. These conclusions hold even while accounting for inter-individual heterogeneity. In agreement with aforementioned studies on captive vertebrates, these results remind us that reproduction is expected to be traded against body maintenance and the survival prospect only when resources are so limiting that they induce an allocation trade-off. Thus, the cost of reproduction has a major extrinsic component driven by environmental conditions.Data_Microcebus_murinus_CoRData_Microcebus_murinus_CoR.csv contains individuals' characteristics and reproductive history, and the dates each individual enters and exits each reproductive season, from first reproductive success to death or censoring time, collected on captive female grey mouse lemurs