Unpredictability and adaptive responses to dietary variability in Japanese quail

Understanding animals' molecular mechanisms of adaptation to unpredictable changes in dietary availability provides insights into how organisms optimize resource utilisation and ensure survival under such conditions. The mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) is a candidate nutrient-sensing pathway underpinning a form of adaptive plasticity when individuals encounter constraints in their energy budget. We exposed adult Japanese quails (Coturnix japonica) of both sexes to three dietary conditions: daily unpredictable feeding, constant restriction, and full feeding for 16 days. Our study revealed that unpredictability reduced the body mass of female birds, whereas males remained unaffected. Egg production traits were not affected by unpredictable feeding. However, constant dietary restriction had a significant negative impact, suggesting resource reallocation to reproduction under unpredictable feeding conditions. We found sex-dependent gene expression patterns of mTOR pathway genes: whil..., , # Data from: Unpredictability and adaptive responses to dietary variability in Japanese quail

Reda GK, Ndunguru SF, Csernus B, Knop R, Szabó C, Czeglédi L, Lendvai ÁZ: Unpredictability and adaptive responses to dietary variability in Japanese quail

## Description of the data and file structure

The data consist of a set of files, including (1) Body mass of birds, (2) Egg number and egg mass, (3) gene expression, (4) Feed intake, (5) Pre-tratment body mass, (6) Pre-treatment feed intake, (7) R code used to generate all analyses and figures.

## Files and variables

### File 1: body_mass.xlsx

**Description:** We exposed adult Japanese quails (Coturnix japonica) of both sexes to three dietary conditions: daily unpredictable feeding, 40% constant restriction, and full feeding for 16 days. We measured body mass at the beginning of the experiment (day 0) and on days 4, 8, and 16 of the treatment period using a digital scale (± 0.1 g). The unit of measurement was gram (g). The data contains...,