Diet-manipulated body condition affects onset and speed of moult in Common Bulbuls in a tropical environment

Resource acquisition and allocation are central to life history theory, explaining the diversity of strategies among species as well as the distribution of events over the annual cycle. Moult is a major phase in the annual cycle of birds, but explanations for moult scheduling are heavily biased towards temperate systems with seasonal breeding patterns. Our research on a year-round breeding tropical bird, the Common Bulbul Pycnonotus barbatus (Bulbul), tests whether moult depends primarily on stored body reserves (capital) or on resources acquired throughout the moult period (income). Making this distinction elucidates trade-offs between moult and other annual cycle events, and responses to environmental change. We estimated moult start date and duration in captive Bulbuls whose body condition we experimentally manipulated by feeding them fruits or invertebrates 6–3 and 3-0 months before moult, and fruits or a mixed diet during moult. We studied free-living Bulbuls as the reference group..., , # Diet-manipulated body condition affects the onset and speed of moult in Common Bulbuls in a tropical environment

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.ttdz08mbd](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ttdz08mbd)

## Description of the data and file structure

### Files and variables

#### File: Diet_treatment_Groups.txt

**Description of the variables**

* Ring: Unique Ring number identifying individual birds
* Switch: Diet treatment history of aviary birds 6-3 and 3-0 months before moult; fruit-fed throughout (FF), Invertebrate-fed throughout (II), Fruit-Invertebrate (FI), and Invertebrate-Fruit (IF)
* Mid: Diet treatment 3-0 months in aviary birds before moult; Fruits (F), and Invertebrates (I)
* Long: Diet treatment 6-3 months in aviary birds before moult; Fruits (F), and Invertebrates (I)
* During: Diet treatment during moult in aviary birds; Fruits (F), Mixed diet of fruits and invertebrates (I)

#### File: Moult_scores_data.txt

**Description of the variables**

* Ring: Unique Ring number identif...,