Chick behavioural responses to 3D-printed insect replicas, featuring combinations of traits from wasps and flies
Taylor, C.H., Watson, D.J.G., Bell, D., Skelhorn, J., Gilbert, F., Reader, T. (2024). Chick behavioural responses to 3D-printed insect replicas, featuring combinations of traits from wasps and flies. NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/45391184-603e-4284-bb3c-9c8c6bf856ab
These data describe individual behaviour during an experiment investigating chick responses to different trait combinations in 3D-printed insect replicas. Replicas were based on various combinations of shape, pattern, colour and size traits taken from either non-mimetic flies (Tachina fera) or wasps (Vespula vulgaris). Data describe chick progress through several phases: - A grouped phase where chicks became familiar with foraging within the experimental arena - A training phase, during which they open lids of small dishes and consume mealworms, - A learning phase, where the chicks learned to associate fly stimuli with a reward and wasp stimuli with no reward - A testing phase, in which they were presented with single stimuli at a time and we recorded the time taken to approach and attack the stimulus. Also included are chick growth curves (daily weights in g) for the period of the experiment.
Behavioural observations were noted in the laboratory at the time of the experiment, and later transcribed from notebooks to digital spreadsheets. Timings were analysed from video recordings played at 0.3x using the software BORIS. Quality control and collation of data was carried out within R v.4.3.2 before export to .csv