Additional file 6: of Multi-level comparisons of cloacal, skin, feather and nest-associated microbiota suggest considerable influence of horizontal acquisition on the microbiota assembly of sympatric woodlarks and skylarks

Preprocessed, quality filtered raw sequence data file. (FASTA 74532 kb

Additional file 3: of Multi-level comparisons of cloacal, skin, feather and nest-associated microbiota suggest considerable influence of horizontal acquisition on the microbiota assembly of sympatric woodlarks and skylarks

Pipeline for sequence data processing. (TXT 18 kb

Additional file 7: of Multi-level comparisons of cloacal, skin, feather and nest-associated microbiota suggest considerable influence of horizontal acquisition on the microbiota assembly of sympatric woodlarks and skylarks

R script file for statistical analysis. (R 77 kb

Additional file 2: of Multi-level comparisons of cloacal, skin, feather and nest-associated microbiota suggest considerable influence of horizontal acquisition on the microbiota assembly of sympatric woodlarks and skylarks

Metadata file for creation of phyloseq object. (TXT 14 kb

Additional file 5: of Multi-level comparisons of cloacal, skin, feather and nest-associated microbiota suggest considerable influence of horizontal acquisition on the microbiota assembly of sympatric woodlarks and skylarks

Phylogenetic tree file for creation of phyloseq object. (TRE 7216 kb

Data from: Causes and consequences of partial migration in a passerine bird

Many animal species have populations in which some individuals migrate and others remain on the breeding grounds. This phenomenon is called partial migration. Despite substantial theoretical work, empirical data on causes and consequences of partial migration remain scarce, mainly because of difficulties associated with tracking individuals over large spatial scales. We used stable hydrogen isotopes in claw material to determine whether skylarks Alauda arvensis from a single breeding population in the Netherlands had migrated or remained resident in the previous winter and investigated whether there were causes or consequences of either strategy. Age and sex had no influence on the propensity to migrate, but larger individuals were more likely to be residents. The wintering strategy was not fixed within individuals. Up to 45% of individuals measured in multiple years switched strategies. Reproductive parameters were not related to the wintering strategy, but individuals that wintered locally experienced lower future return rates, and this was directly correlated with two independent measures of immune function. Our results suggest that partial migration in skylarks is based neither on genetic dimorphism nor on an age- and sex-dependent condition. Instead, the wintering strategy is related to structural size and immune function. These new insights on causes and consequences of partial migration advance our understanding of the ecology, evolution, and coexistence of different life-history strategies. This data package contains one dataset: -data Hegemann et al Partial migration Excel table with 3 sheets. First sheet contains all raw data needed for Post-winter comparisons including all reproductive data, physiological data, morphological data and return rate as well as stable isotope values used for assigning birds as migrants, residents or unknown, respectively. From these table also comparisons between age and sex classes, consistency versus switching of strategies and tarsus length among switchers, obligate residents and obligate migrants can be extracted. Sheet 2 contains all data for the within-individual comparisons (longitudinal data). Sheet 3 contains data regarding the test for assortative mating

Additional file 4: of Multi-level comparisons of cloacal, skin, feather and nest-associated microbiota suggest considerable influence of horizontal acquisition on the microbiota assembly of sympatric woodlarks and skylarks

OTU community table file for creation of phyloseq object. (BIOM 1676 kb

Data from: Do immunological, endocrine and metabolic traits fall on a single Pace-of-Life axis? Covariation and constraints among physiological systems

Variation in demographic and physiological attributes of life-history is thought to fall on one single axis, a phenomenon termed the Pace-of-Life. A slow Pace-of-Life is characterized by low annual reproduction, long life span and low metabolic rate, a fast Pace-of-Life by the opposite characteristics. The existence of a single axis has been attributed to constraints among physiological mechanisms that are thought to restrict evolutionary potential. In that case, physiological traits should covary in the same fashion at the levels of individual organisms and species. We examined covariation at the levels of individual and subspecies in three physiological systems (metabolic, endocrine and immune) using four stonechat subspecies with distinct life-history strategies in a common garden set-up. We measured basal metabolic rate, corticosterone as endocrine measure, and six measures of constitutive immunity. Metabolic rate covaried with two indices of immunity at the individual level, and with corticosterone concentrations and one index of immunity at the subspecies level, but not with other measures. The different patterns of covariation among individuals and among subspecies demonstrate that links among physiological traits are loose and suggest that these traits can evolve independent of each other. The data package contains one dataset: - BMR, immune and corticosterone data used in the article by Versteegh et al. in Journal of Evolutionary Biology 201

Data from: Seasonal differences in baseline innate immune function are better explained by environment than annual cycle stage in a year-round breeding tropical songbird

Data was collected at the Amurum Forest Reserve (09°52’N, 08°58’E) which is located at the A.P. Leventis Ornithological Research Institute (APLORI) in Nigeria. Data was collected between January 2014 and February 2016. Birds were caught using mist nets. Data contains individual information of Common Bulbuls Pycnonotus barbatus sampled for blood to quantify indices of innate immunity, including haptoglobin, nitric oxide (NOx) and ovotransferrin concentrations, and haemagglutination and haemolysis

Data from: Effects of manipulated food availability and seasonality on innate immune function in a passerine

1. The innate immune system is essential for survival, yet many immune traits are highly variable between and within individuals. In recent years, attention has shifted to the role of environmental factors in modulating this variation. A key environmental factor is food availability, which plays a major role in shaping life-histories, and may affect resource allocation to immune function through its effect on nutritional state. 2. We developed a technique to permanently increase foraging costs in seed-eating birds, and leveraged this technique to study the effects of food availability on the innate immune system over a three-year period in 230 zebra finches housed in outdoor aviaries. The immune components we studied were haptoglobin, ovotransferrin, nitric oxide, natural antibodies through agglutination, complement-mediated lysis, and killing capacity of Escherichia coli and Candida albicans, covering a broad spectrum of the innate immune system. We explored effects of food availability in conjunction with other potentially important variables: season, age, sex, and manipulated natal brood size. 3. Increased foraging costs affected multiple components of the immune system, albeit in a variable way. Nitric oxide and agglutination levels were lower under harsh foraging conditions, while Escherichia coli killing capacity was increased. Agglutination levels also varied seasonally, but only at low foraging costs. C. albicans' killing capacity was lower in winter, and even more so for animals in harsh foraging conditions that were raised in large broods. Effects of food availability on ovotransferrin were also seasonal, and only apparent in males. Haptoglobin levels were independent of foraging costs and season. 4. Males had higher levels of immune function than females for 3 of the measured immune traits. Innate immune function was independent of age and manipulated natal brood size. 5. Our finding that food availability affects innate immune function suggests that fitness effects of food availability may at least partially be mediated by effects on the immune system. However, food availability effects on innate immunity varied in direction between traits, illustrating the complexity of the immune system and precluding conclusions on the level of disease resistance