Food and social cues modulate reproductive development but not migratory behavior in a nomadic songbird, the Pine Siskin (Pinus spinus)

Many animals rely on photoperiodic and non-photoperiodic environmental cues to gather information and appropriately time life history stages across the annual cycle, such as reproduction, molt, and migration. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that the reproductive physiology, but not migratory behavior, of captive Pine Siskins responds to both food and social cues during the spring migratory-breeding period. Pine Siskins are a nomadic finch with a highly flexible breeding schedule and, in the spring, free-living Pine Siskins can wander large geographic areas and opportunistically breed. To understand the importance of non-photoperiodic cues to the migratory-breeding transition, we maintained individually housed birds on either a standard or enriched diet in the presence of group-housed heterospecifics or conspecifics experiencing either the standard or enriched diet type. We measured body condition and reproductive development of all Pine Siskins and, among individually housed Pine Si..., The data were collected from captive pine siskins using morphological measurements and infrared sensors. Data from infrared sensors has been filtered so only specific times of day are included in summed activity values., , # Pine siskin data analysis

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This dataset includes activity, body condition, and reproductive condition measurements for male and female pine siskins housed either alone or in groups. These data were collected from an experiment testing how different combinations of environmental cues influence changes in behavior and physiology during the migratory-spring breeding transition.

## Description of the Data and file structure

Read me file for “Modulation of Reproductive Physiology and Migratory Behavior in a Nomadic Songbird during Spring: Influence of Food and Social Cues”

**File name: food.consumption.data.csv**

Columns:

Date: The day of the year data were collected in “mm/dd/yy” format

Room: Categorical variable denoting which room the birds were housed in

birds: categorical variable denoting the bird identification. Group-housed bird have a cage ID rather than band number.

housing: indicates if the bird was housed alone or in groups

cons: binary variable denoting if food i...