Filial cannibalism leads to chronic nest failure of eastern hellbender salamanders (Cryptobranchus alleganienesis)

These data and code support the results in our accompanying manuscript. In species that provide parental care, parents will sometimes cannibalize their own young. Here, we quantified the frequency of whole-clutch filial cannibalism in a species of giant salamander (eastern hellbender; Cryptobranchus alleganienesis) that has experienced precipitous population declines with unknown causes. We used underwater, artificial nesting shelters deployed across a gradient of upstream forest cover to assess the fates of 182 nests at 10 sites over 8 years. We found strong evidence that nest failure rates increased at sites with low riparian forest cover in the upstream catchment. At several sites, reproductive failure was 100%, mainly due to cannibalism by the caring male. The high incidence of filial cannibalism at degraded sites was not explained by evolutionary hypotheses for filial cannibalism based on adult body condition or low reproductive value of clutches. Instead, larger clutches at degrad..., We used underwater, artificial nesting shelters deployed across a gradient of upstream forest cover to assess the fates of 182 nests at 10 sites over 8 years. We measured nest success using images and videos taken at different times of the year. The data included here have been checked for quality control. The analysis is available in the R script. , R programming language version 4.1.1 are needed to open and run the R software. Rstudio (free version of the IDE) may be useful. Newer versions of R may or may not compile Stan; see README for details. 
For the image files (.jpg) a photo viewer is needed. Preview on Mac OS or an open-source image viewer such as Image Glass (for Windows 10) can be used to view the photos once downloaded. 
For the movie files (.mp4) a movie player is needed. VLC is an open-source media player that works on both Windows and Mac platforms.Â