Limited associations between MHC diversity and reproductive success in a bird species with biparental care

The selective pressure from pathogens on individuals can have direct consequences on reproduction. Genes from the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) are central to the vertebrate adaptive immune system and pathogen resistance. In species with biparental care, each sex has distinct reproductive roles and levels of investment, and due to a trade-off with immunity, one can expect different selective regimes acting upon the MHC of each parent. Here, we addressed whether couples combine each other’s variation at MHC loci to increase their breeding success. Specifically, we used a 23-year dataset from a barn owl population (Tyto alba) to understand how MHC class Iα and IIβ functional divergence and supertypes of each parent were associated with clutch size and fledging success. We did not detect associations between MHC diversity or supertypes with the clutch size nor with the fledging success. In addition, to understand the relative contribution from the MHC of the genetic parents and th..., , , # Limited associations between MHC diversity and reproductive success in a bird species with biparental care

R scripts and .csv files used to model the response of reproductive success (clutch size and fledging success) to MHC diversity (functional divergence and presence of the most common supertypes) of a wild barn owl population. Sample size might vary between files due to missing genotypes.

## Description of the data and file structure

Info_file: description of files and variables.

xxxx_alleles_fasta.fas: fasta files of the alleles present in this barn owl population. Accession numbers can be found in the supplementary material.

Dataset_xxxx_fdiv/supertypes_all_dataset.csv: files containing the entire dataset used to test the variation in the clutch size and fledging success of each breeding attempt in response to MHC variables and covariates.

Dataset_xxxx_fdiv/supertypes_full_cross-foster.csv: files containing the cross-fostered dataset used to test the variation in the fl...