Nest construction and its effect on post-hatching family life in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides

Through the effort required to construct them, the microenvironmental conditions they impose on the family and their indirect influence on post-hatching care, nests play a key role in influencing family life. We combined experimental evolution with cross-fostering experiments on laboratory populations of Nicrophorus vespilloides to investigate three ways in which the nest can contribute more broadly to parental investment. We used replicate populations of N. vespilloides that had evolved for 42 generations under contrasting regimes of care. Populations were either able to supply post-hatching care (“Full Care”) or prevented from supplying any post-hatching care (“No Care”). Research on these populations has previously shown that the No Care populations evolved to build rounder nests, more rapidly, by Generation 14. Here we found: 1) larvae raised by Full Care parents on nests prepared by parents from the No Care population did not attain a higher mass by the end of larval development th..., , , # Bladon EK & Kilner RM (2024). Nest construction and its effect on post-hatching family life in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides. [https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.03.29.587327](https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.03.29.587327)

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# Description of the data and file structure

Details of data collection methods for each of the datasets can be found in the manuscript listed above.

The data set contains the following columns:

*Block - Experimental block 1 or 2

*Treatment - NCwFCMouse = a pair of beetles from a No Care evolutionary population given a carcass nest prepared by a pair of beetles from a Full Care population, FCwNCMouse = a pair of beetles from a Full Care evolutionary population given a carcass nest prepared by a pair of beetles from a No Care population, NCwNCMouse = a pair of beetles from a No Care evoluti...