Data from: Male care and life history traits in mammals

Male care has energetic and opportunity costs, and is more likely to evolve when males gain greater certainty of paternity or when future mating opportunities are scarce. However, little is known about the substantial benefits that males may provide to females and offspring. Using phylogenetic comparative methods and a sample of over 500 mammalian species, we show that mammals in which males carry the offspring have shorter lactation periods, which leads to more frequent breeding events. Provisioning the female is associated with larger litters and shorter lactation. Offspring of species with male care have similar weaning mass to those without despite being supported by a shorter lactation period, implying that they grow faster. We propose that males provide an energetic contribution during the most expensive time of female reproduction, lactation, and that different male care behaviours increase female fecundity, which in turn helps males offset the costs of caring.West & Capellini NComm Male care datasetThe data file contains data on the presence/absence of male parental care behaviours, allocare, social monogamy, life history traits, and citation counts in mammalian species, at the global scale. Here we provide basic details of the variables included in the data file. The full description of the data and data collection protocols for all behavioural and life history traits can be found in the Methods section of the Nature Communications paper. The total sample size of species in this dataset is 529 mammals, although not all species have data for all variables.LH paper dataset.xls