Sex allocation in a monogamous bird: advantaged matrilines and sons with silver spoons

The ability to secure food for offspring and withstand the cost of reproduction favors high-quality mothers that overproduce the larger sex, typically sons, only if they will receive adequate food as this should enhance these sons’ fitness returns. However, high-quality daughters ensure grandoffspring receive quality parental care and may possess greater reproductive value than their brothers, favoring daughters also from high-quality mothers. Using a mixed cross-fostering approach, we investigated effects of early rearing conditions, covariance between breeders and their genetic parents in parental quality, and primary offspring sex ratios in Carolina wrens. In this socially and genetically monogamous bird, sons grew larger than daughters, paternal food-provisioning impacted the condition and recruitment of sons, but not daughters, and females overproduced sons when paired with males that provisioned at a high rate, reflecting females’ anticipation of the quality of the rearing environ..., All authors assisted with data collection. EKB wrote statistical code. These data were collected from 2017-2021., , # Data from: Sex allocation in a monogamous bird: advantaged matrilines and sons with silver spoons

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.xgxd254qm](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.xgxd254qm)

This study examined the effects of parental investment in a monogamous bird and its effects on offspring survival, condition, and recruitment, covariance between offspring and their genetic parents in components of reproductive investment, and offspring sex ratios.

## Description of the data and file structure

The data collected for this study at the University of Memphis Meeman Biological Station is contained in a set of .SAS and .R files, which are intended to be immediately executable. Provided in addition to these files are eight .csv files with the raw data: (i) data FEMS_FIRST_NEST, (ii) data NESTS, (iii) data NESTS_STACKED, (iv) data RECRUITS, (v) data REPEAT_ADULTS, (vi) data REPEAT_PROV, (vii) data YOUNG, (viii) data SEX_RATIO_VARIANCE. Datasets i-vii were analyzed using SAS (ver. 9.4) and data...