Performance traits and life-history traits

Descrizione

It contains the data of two performance traits (survival and parasitism) and two life-history traits (sex ratio and number of offspring per nest for the hosts) at the nest level.

We assessed performance traits, i.e. survival and parasitism, at the individual cell level. Specifically, for each cell within a nest, we noted whether the cell was alive or dead (survival), and whether it had a parasite or not (parasitism). Further, we calculated the parasitism rate as the number of cells with a parasite divided by the total number of cells. Concerning life-history traits, we calculated the total number of brood cells per nest as the total number of brood cells within a single nest, regardless of whether the larvae were dead, alive or parasitized. Finally, we used the probability that a femalehost emerged from a given cell as a proxy for the sex ratio. To do so, we first identified the sex of the individual hosts. Then, we noted it in a binary way to indicate whether the host was a female or not. We could identify the sex of all hatched hosts. Further, because CNBW first lay females and then males, on some occasions we could also identify the host sex in dead and parasitized cells, that is, when we had already identified the sex of the preceding and the following cells.