[DATASET and CODE]: Effectiveness of multicomponent, dynamic begging displays as honest signals of nestling hunger

This package contains three Excel workbooks plus six accompanying R scripts documenting field and laboratory data and analyses on multicomponent nestling begging displays in spotless starlings. The core raw datasets are (i) "Natural_broods.xlsx", a parental visit-level table from natural nests (4 188 rows) in which each row represents a nestling’s behaviour and feeding outcome during a parental visit; and (ii) "Laboratory_nestlings.xlsx", which includes a bout-level postural dataset (300 rows; one row per chick × deprivation treatment × stimulus) and a call-level acoustic dataset (1 904 rows; one row per call with within-bout sequencing and bout identifiers).The file "Data_figures.xlsx" provides processed, figure-ready tables used to plot the manuscript figures and is intended for direct reuse in visualisation or verification. The six R scripts correspond to (1) the three analysis streams: (a) mixed-model effect sizes (R²-based)(scripts "R2_Models_/), (b) information-theoretic measures of coding effectiveness (scripts "Information_/"), and (c) receiver-based decoding via random-forest classification (script "Random_forest_laboratory_nestlings"; plus (2) One script for figure plotting. All scripts assume that the Excel data files are available in the working directory (or that paths in the scripts are edited accordingly).