A comprehensive survey of the life history aspects of conspecific brood parasitism in birds

Three files are included: (1) an excel file with a the results of an exhaustive survey on the life history aspects of conspecific brood parasitism (CBP) in birds, (2) a list of the codes used to describe the different life history traits that we included in each column of the dataset, and (3) a list of the references from which we obtained the data.

 

Our list of species was compiled based on our general familiarity of the field and from Web of Science searches with the following terms: conspecific brood parasitism (331 hits), intraspecific nest parasitism (422 hits) and egg dumping (175 hits). Because our focus is on the life history aspects of CBP we only included in our survey studies that provide information relevant to life history aspects (i.e., we did not include studies that only report the frequency of parasitism). Specifically, we included only studies that had empirical, quantitative estimates of life history traits; we did not include studies that only speculated or contained anecdotal evidence. Based on our survey, information on one or more life history components of CBP is available for 56 species from 19 different families of birds.

 

In all cases we did our best to use the authors’ determination of parameters or hypotheses supported; we did not add in our own interpretation or re-evaluation.

 

Where relevant, information on the criteria used to designate different traits to specific categories (codes) is explained in the document of the list of codes used in the dataset.