Data from: Offspring dynamics affect food provisioning, growth and mortality in a brood-caring spider

In brood-caring species, family members are faced with a conflict over resource distribution. While parents are selected to adapt the amount of care according to their offspring's needs, offspring might be selected to demand more care than optimal for parents. Recent studies on birds have shown that the social network structure of offspring affects the amount of care and thus the fitness of families. Such a network structure of repeated interactions is probably influenced by within-brood relatedness. We experimentally manipulated the group composition in a brood-caring spider to test how the presence of unrelated spiderlings affects the dynamics between female and brood as well as within broods. Broods consisting of siblings grew better and had a lower mortality compared with mixed broods, no matter whether the caring female was a genetic or foster mother. Interestingly, we found that foster mothers lost weight when caring for sibling broods, whereas females caring for mixed broods gained weight. This indicates that females may be willing to share more prey when the brood contains exclusively siblings even if the entire brood is unrelated to the female. Resource distribution may thus be negotiated by offspring dynamics that could have a signalling function to females.

Usage Notes
SurvivalOffspring_PorportionalHazardSurvivalOffspring_GEE_for DRYAD.xlsbSurvivalFemaleProportionalHAZARDMATRIPHAGY mass changeMASTER_FEMALEandOFFSPRINGmassFemale Hunting Success

在抚育后代物种中，家族成员面临资源分配的冲突。父母亲被选中以适应其后代的护理需求，而后代可能被选中要求比父母亲最优护理量更多的护理。近期对鸟类的研究表明，后代的社交网络结构会影响护理量以及家庭的适应度。这种重复互动的网络结构可能受到家族内相关性的影响。我们通过在抚育后代蜘蛛中操纵群体组成，实验性地测试了非亲缘幼蛛的存在如何影响雌蛛与后代之间的动态以及后代群体内部的动态。由同胞组成的后代群体生长状况更佳，死亡率更低，无论照顾雌蛛是遗传母亲还是寄养母亲。有趣的是，我们发现寄养母亲在照顾同胞后代时会体重减轻，而照顾混合后代的雌蛛则会体重增加。这表明，即使整个后代群体与雌蛛无亲缘关系，雌蛛也愿意在后代群体仅由同胞组成时分享更多猎物。因此，资源分配可能通过后代动态进行协商，这可能对雌蛛具有信号功能。

使用说明

SurvivalOffspring_PorportionalHazardSurvivalOffspring_GEE_for DRYAD.xlsbSurvivalFemaleProportionalHAZARDMATRIPHAGY mass changeMASTER_FEMALEandOFFSPRINGmassFemale Hunting Success