CTT Parental Care Species Dataset: Supplementary Data for "Counterpart Tracking: The Architecture of Predictable Inter-Organism Interaction"

This repository contains the supplementary materials for Masensi (2026), “Counterpart Tracking: The Architecture of Predictable Inter-Organism Interaction,” which derives and tests two structural impossibility predictions for parental care from a counterpart-tracking framework.The dataset codes 194 species across 6 phyla (Chordata, Echinodermata, Mollusca, Cnidaria, Annelida, Arthropoda) for reproductive mode, offspring characteristics, and parental care presence. It supports a counterexample search testing whether state-dependent parental care can occur when transmissibility between parent and offspring is structurally absent. Across 155 species meeting the impossibility conditions (125 broadcast spawners in large environments with parental departure; 30 precocial dispersers with no offspring signaling), zero counterexamples were found. An additional 39 positive-control species, precocial offspring with signaling or travel limitation, all exhibit parental care as predicted.Data were collected using a three-phase AI-assisted methodology designed to prevent confirmation bias. Phase 1 used theory-blind prompts (no mention of the predictions being tested) to generate species lists via DeepSeek and Grok. Phase 2 used ChatGPT and Gemini for independent cross-validation and adversarial counterexample searches. Phase 3 used Claude for final analysis after data collection was complete. A 20% subset was independently double-coded (Cohen’s κ = 0.91). All prompts are provided in full.