The transgenerational consequences of paternal social isolation and predation exposure in threespined sticklebacks

Parents routinely encounter stress in the ecological environment that can affect offspring development (transgenerational plasticity: TGP); however, parents’ interactions with conspecifics may alter how parents respond to ecological stressors. During social buffering, the presence of conspecifics can reduce the response to or increase the speed of recovery from a stressor. This may have cascading effects on offspring if conspecifics can mitigate parental responses to ecological stress in ways that blunt the transmission of stress-induced transgenerational effects. Here, we simultaneously manipulated both paternal social isolation and experience with predation risk prior to fertilization in threespined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus). We generated offspring via in-vitro fertilization to allow us to isolate paternal effects mediated via sperm alone (i.e., in the absence of paternal care). If social buffering mitigates TGP induced by paternal exposure to predation risk, then we expect..., In a full-factorial experiment, we exposed stickleback fathers to predation risk when they were isolated or had a male neighbor, to test whether the transgenerational effects of predation exposure could be socially buffered. We then generated offspring and assayed them for behavior (shoaling and scototaxis) as well as survival against a live predator. , , # The transgenerational consequences of paternal social isolation and predation exposure in threespined sticklebacks

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.7h44j102c](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.7h44j102c)

We include 3 datasets and R files - each one corresponds to a separate offspring assay (scototaxis, shoaling, and survival).

## Description of the data and file structure

All 3 datasets contain information about the fish ID, the clutch it came from, paternal predator treatment (visual 'yes' is predator-exposed, visual 'no' is control), paternal neighbor treatment, length (in mm), and mass (in g). The scototaxis file also contains additional columns for assay tank, tank orientation (black side on left or right), observer (the individual who scored the video file), time to enter the white section, how many times the fish switched sides, thigmotaxis in the white section, and total time in the white section. The shoaling file was used to analyze length and mass, and contains additional colu...