Data from: Effects of manipulated levels of predation threat on parental provisioning and nestling begging

Parental provisioning behavior is a major determinant of offspring growth and survival, but high provisioning rates might come at the cost of increased predation threat. Parents should thus adjust provisioning activity according to current predation threat levels. Moreover, life-history theory predicts that response to predation threat should be correlated with investment in current reproduction. We experimentally manipulated perceived predation threat in free-living great tits (Parus major) by presenting parents with a nest predator model while monitoring different aspects of provisioning behavior and nestling begging. Experiments were conducted in two years differing greatly in ecological conditions, including food availability. We further quantified male territorial aggressiveness and male and female exploratory tendency. Parents adjusted provisioning according to current levels of threat in an apparently adaptive way. They delayed nest visits during periods of elevated perceived predation threat and subsequently compensating for lost feeding opportunities by increasing provisioning once the immediate threat had diminished. Nestling begging increased after elevated levels of predation threat, but returned to baseline levels by the end of the experiment, suggesting that parents had fully compensated for lost feeding opportunities. There was no evidence for a link between male exploration behavior or aggressiveness and provisioning behavior. In contrast, fast-exploring females provisioned at higher rates, but only in the year with poor environmental conditions, which might indicate a greater willingness to invest in current reproduction in general. Future work should assess whether these personality-related differences in delivery rates under harsher conditions came at a cost of reduced residual reproductive value.Feeding latencyThis file contains the data used for the analyses on the effect of treatment on feeding latency.ProvisioningThis file contains the data used for the analyses on the effect of treatment on visit-level provisioning data (i.e. ivi, load size, short-term delivery and prey type) and the effect of exploration behavior and aggressiveness on short-term delivery.Long-term deliveryThis file contains the data used for the analyses on the effect of treatment on long-term delivery.Standardized begging and long-term deliveryThis file contains the data used for figure 4. Values of begging and long-term delivery (from "Long-term delivery.xlsx") were standardized to a mean of zero and standard deviation of 1 within year and then averaged per treatment and year.Short-term delivery per treatmentThis file contains the data used for figure 5. In this file short-term delivery is averaged per treatment and individual.READMEThis file describes the data files accompanying the publication