A Detailled Ethogram and Sex and Morph Variation in Precocious Sexual Behaviour in Ruffs during Early Development

<b>Purpose:</b>
This dataset documents the early behavioural development of hand-raised ruff (Calidris pugnax) chicks. It was collected to describe the behavioural repertoire during early ontogeny and to quantify sex-, morph-, and individual variation in social and precocious sexual behaviours.

<b>Nature of the Data:</b>
The dataset consists of systematic behavioural observations recorded from interactions of the chicks with a stuffed dummy chick and each other. For each chick and trial, the data include:
- Metadata on individual identity, hatch date, sex, and morph
- Experimental context (trial date, age in days post-hatching, housing condition)
- Behavioural scores extracted from video analysis, including the duration of behaviours (in seconds)
- Behaviours are categorised according to the ethogram established in Study1, including maintenance, movement, stationary, social non-sexual, and social precocious sexual behaviours.

<b>Scope:</b>
- Study1 (QUALI) dataset: ruff chicks aged 3–15 days post-hatching, used to establish the ethogram and describe age-related changes in behaviour.
- Study2 (QUANTI) dataset: ruff chicks aged 3–9 days post-hatching, expanded dataset used to assess sex-, morph-, and individual variation in social and precocious sexual behaviours.

The dataset includes raw behavioural scoring tables, trial metadata, and analysis-ready processed tables used in the statistical models. No animals were sacrificed for the purpose of data collection; model stimuli were taxidermied individuals that died in earlier breeding seasons.

<b>Uploaded scripts:</b>
scripts to clean raw output from BORIS coding software:
1.0_PSB_cleanBORISraw_FUNCTIONS.Rmd
1.1_PSB_cleanBORISraw_QUALI.Rmd
1.2_PSB_cleanBORISraw_QUANTI.Rmd

scripts to run analyses and plotting:
2.0_PSB_Analysis_FUNCTIONS.Rmd
2.1.1_PSB_Analysis_QUALI_brm_hg.Rmd
2.1.2_PSB_Analysis_QUALI_overview panels.Rmd
2.1.3_PSB_Analysis_QUALI_additional_stuff.Rmd
2.2.1_PSB_Analysis_QUANTI_brm_hg_lme4.Rmd
2.2.2_PSB_Analysis_QUANTI_overview panels.Rmd
2.2.3_PSB_Analysis_QUANTI_additional_stuff.Rmd

Note: large functions are often defined in the first and called in the other scripts.