Timing of egg-laying in relation to a female's social environment in European starlings

It is widely assumed that female birds use non-photic supplemental cues, including social factors, to fine-tune timing of egg-laying to local conditions, but our knowledge of the nature of these social cues and how they operate remains limited. We analyzed the relationship between a female’s social environment (nearest neighbor distances, residency, female -and- network familiarity, synchrony) and variation in timing of egg-laying in European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) using individual, residual laying date (controlling for annual variation) and temperature-independent residual laying date (accounting for the effect of ambient temperature on laying date). Female social environment varied systematically with overall spatial distribution of nest-boxes (linear vs clumped boxes) but this was not associated with spatial variation in laying date or temperature-independent residual laying date. We found no evidence for any relationships between individual variation in social environment and ..., , , ### Data explained

All distances are measured in meters.

'.' denotes unavailable data (i.e., unable to confirm band number due to early nest failure, so data for residency, female familiarity, and network familiarity of these birds is unavailable) 

* Year - Year data was collected
* Loc - Location nestbox is on research site (New Barn, Old Barn, Main Field)
* Box - The box number a female nested in
* Orientation - The orientation of the box a female nested in
* LD - Julian laying date of a female
* xLD - The mean Julian laying date of the population for the year data was collected
* residLD - The difference between a females laying date and the average laying date of all females the year data was collected
* Ta_predLD - The predicted mean laying date for the year based on Julian 2-94 (2 Jan - 4 Apr) based on the calculated formula in Leonard and Williams 2023
* Ta_residLD - The difference between a females actual laying date and the temperature-predicted laying date...