Data from: A female’s past experience with predators affects male courtship and the care her offspring will receive from their father

Differential allocation occurs when individuals adjust their reproductive
investment based on their partner's traits. However, it remains
unknown whether animals differentially allocate based on their
partner's past experiences with predation risk. If animals can detect
a potential mate’s experience with predators, this might inform them about
the stress level of their potential mate, the likelihood of parental
effects in offspring, and/or the dangers present in the environment. Using
threespined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), we examined whether a
female’s previous experience with being chased by a model predator while
yolking eggs affects male mating effort and offspring care. Males
displayed fewer conspicuous courtship behaviours towards females that had
experienced predation risk in the past compared to unexposed females. This
differential allocation extended to how males cared for the resulting
offspring of these matings: fathers provided less parental care to
offspring of females that had experienced predation risk in the past. Our
results show for the first time that variation among females in their
predator encounters can contribute to behavioural variation among males in
courtship and parental care, even when males themselves do not encounter a
predator. These results, together with previous findings, suggest that
maternal predator exposure can influence offspring development both
directly and indirectly, through how it affects father care.