Data from: Food supplementing peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus tundrius) nests increases reproductive success without changes in parental mean provisioning rate

Parents are expected to exhibit intermediate levels of investment in
parental care that reflect the trade-off between current versus future
reproduction. Providing parents with supplemental food may allow for
increased care to the current brood (additive model), re-allocation of
parental effort to other behaviours such as self-maintenance (substitution
model) or may provide parents with a buffer against provisioning
shortfalls (insurance model). We investigated the impact of parental food
supplementation on provisioning behaviour and breeding success in
Arctic-breeding peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus tundrius) over five
successive breeding seasons (2013-2017). We found that supplemental
feeding had no impact on mean provisioning rates, yet resulted in
increased nestling survival probability, increased nestling body mass, and
decreased variance in nestling body mass and provisioning rates. These
results are consistent with parents adopting a hybrid of the additive and
substitution models. We suggest that food supplementation enables
increased investment in other forms of parental care (e.g., nest defence,
brooding) without altering mean provisioning rates. The lack of observed
effects on mean provisioning rates, coupled with increased survival and
body mass of offspring, suggests a potential reallocation of parental
effort. The findings contribute to understanding the responses of
peregrine falcons to food supplementation, highlighting the need for
future studies to explore broader environmental contexts and potential
long-term effects on parental survival and future reproduction.