Conflict and cooperation in male-male partnerships alters paternal care in the ocellated wrasse

Parental care is a critical determinant of offspring fitness. Female presence and male competition affects paternal care, but male-male cooperation during mating may also be an important, yet underappreciated, driver of paternal care. In many systems, males work together to court females or defend territories against male competitors. This male-male cooperation can alter actual or perceived paternity of the parenting male and could, therefore, influence how males invest in care during the post-mating period. Here, we measured how reproductive and social dynamics between nesting and satellite males during mating correlate with nesting male paternal care in the ocellated wrasse (Symphodus ocellatus). Although paternal care (fanning rates) was repeatable across days within the same nesting cycle, it was not repeatable across different nesting cycles, suggesting that males plastically alter care in response to the environment. Nesting males provided care for fewer days at nests with the mos..., , # Conflict and cooperation in male-male partnerships alters paternal care in the ocellated wrasse

## Data collection

Year of data collection: 2018 and 2019
Geographic location(s) of data collection: University of Liege Marine Station (STARESO) in the Baie de Revellata near Calvi, Corsica, France (42.5806° N, 8.7243° E)

## Data files and variables

The ‘Parenting observations’ data file contains all of the parental care observations for all days for all nests. The ‘Nest and spawning average’ file contains the metadata for the nests, behavioral data for the spawning observations (averaged across the two days), and the first day of parental care data. The R file contains all the code to reproduce the statistics and figures.

### 1. Nest_and_spawning_average.csv

* Year: Observation year
* Nest: Nest ID
* Turnover: whether the satellite was replaced experimentally or naturally
* MaleID: Nesting male ID
* NMSL: Nesting male length
* Date.care: Date of the first day of the parental care ob...,