Surviving in the fast lane: No increased mortality, but faster growth for pathogen-exposed larvae of a family living beetle

Animal taxa exhibiting post-hatching care can be found throughout the animal kingdom. During this period, parents aggregate with their offspring and allow them to invest their resources into growth and development as parents take over energy consuming tasks. For instance, studies show that food provisioning and social immunity by parents can alleviate the costs of an offspring’s immune response to pathogen exposure. However, this issue has rarely been explored in offspring of species showing plasticity in their dependency on parental care. Here, we raise the question of how offspring are affected by pathogen exposure if they have access to social immunity through a caring parent. Parents of Nicrophorus vespilloides, a species exhibiting facultative post-hatching care, control the carcass microbiome by coating it with their antimicrobial exudates, stopping further decay and protecting their offspring from potential pathogens. We exposed N. vespilloides offspring to a generalist entomopat..., , # Surviving in the fast lane: No increased mortality, but faster growth for pathogen-exposed larvae of a family living beetle

This data set is split into three different .csv files that were collected during our experiment. Experimental_data.csv contains the data on offspring performance and changes of the fostering female. Immunity_data.csv contains the data about adult offspring immunity. Increased_concentration.csv contains the data about offspring performance when exposed to a high-concentration pathogen solution.

experimental_data.csv - contains offspring performance data and data about the foster mothers

immunity.csv - contains data about the offspring immunity parameter measured as they reached adulthood

increased_concentration.csv - contains data about the effects of an increased spore concentration

encapsulation_assay.zip - contains all .tif-files we have used to measure the encapsulation response of beetles

NA is used in the data files to indicate missing data

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