Causes and consequences of material variation in avian nest building

Houses around the world are built with a variety of materials like timber and brick, depending on a number of factors such as local climate and material availability. Similarly, non-human animals such as birds use diverse materials to build nests. Very little is known about how animals choose nest materials, and how these choices, in turn, affect the function of the nests they build. As an initial attempt to address this question, we investigated the causes and consequences of nest-material use by Dartford warblers (Sylvia undata). The warblers breeding in England show considerable variation in nest materials: some nests are made almost entirely of heather, while others contain a lot of grass. We found that the warblers’ use of nest materials were explained by the composition of the local habitats, but no evidence for relationships between nest-material composition and insulation capacity or the breeding performance. Warblers appear to be able to build equally functional nests using wha..., , , **READ_ME for \"Causes and consequences of material variation in avian nest building\"**

\"DartfordWarbler_JAB.R\" contains R code to carry out data analysis using the following dataset.

\"NestMaterialComp.csv\" contains nestID and % weight (measured in g) of grass, heather, moss, animal (animal-derived material including hair, silk, feathers), and other (including fine material that resulted from the larger materials disintegrating during the dismantling). Note the sum of % the materials does not always add up to 100% due to some materials being very light and measurement errors from being weighed 3 times and then avaraged (for details see Methods).

\"Habitat_within100mBuffer.csv\" contains nestID and area (in square metre) of the following habitat types around nests: arable and horticulture(AH), broadleaved woodland(BW), coniferous woodland(CW), heather(H), heather grassland(HG), and improved grassland(IG).

\"Insulation.csv\" contains nestID and insulation quality (in °C/20 sec) calculated ...,