Extended incubation recesses in Sanderlings are impacted by temperature and body condition

Complex incubation strategies have evolved to solve the trade-off between parent survival and care for their eggs with often brief departures (recesses) that maximise egg survival or infrequent extended recesses maximising adult condition. Here we examined incubation behaviour of Sanderlings (Calidris alba), a species that exhibits both bi- and uniparental incubation behaviour. During 11 breeding seasons in Greenland, we have quantified incubation variability with thermologgers placed in nests. We estimated the impact of environmental conditions and individual characteristics on the occurrence and the duration of recesses. We found that extended recesses are a unique feature of uniparentals, and their frequency and duration increased in colder temperatures. The relationship was mediated by body condition, with individuals in poor condition performing longer extended recesses in colder temperatures. This suggests that extended recesses may represent a shift towards self-maintenance at th..., This dataset (2011-2021) is a long-term monitoring based on fieldwork in Greenland. The field team collects behavioural data at Sanderling nests by putting thermologgers in the nest cups during the incubation period. Loggers are then retrieved at the end of the breeding season and data is processed with TinyTag Explorer Software. One dataset is at the recess (departure from the nest to forage) scale, and the other is at the daily scale (see Methods). Datasets are used in conjunction with the provided R code., , # Extended incubation recesses in Sanderlings are impacted by temperature and body condition

## Description of the data and file structure

We collected behavioural information on Sanderlings' incubation ecology. We collected information on their incubation recesses at two different time scales. Firstly, we collected information at the recess scale: the recess is the statistical unit. Secondly, we pooled these recesses at a daily scale. For that, we focus on the Total Duration of Recesses (TDR), summing all the recesses during a 24h period. Therefore, we obtained two datasets; \"Recesses\", at the recess scale, and \"TDR\" at the daily scale.

Description of the column names:

‘Recesses.txt’ dataset.

·       date: date-hour of each recess performed YY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.

·       recess_size_max: duration of each recess in minutes.

·       recesslong: 0/1 for each recess, to describe if this recess is extended (≥ 120min) or short (<120min).

·       strategy: description of the nest’s s...