A Detailled Ethogram and Sex and Morph Variation in Precocious Sexual Behaviour in Ruffs during Early Development

Scope: - Study1 (QUALI) dataset: ruff chicks aged 3–15 days post-hatching, used to establish the ethogram and describe age-related changes in behaviour. - Study2 (QUANTI) dataset: ruff chicks aged 3–9 days post-hatching, expanded dataset used to assess sex-, morph-, and individual variation in social and precocious sexual behaviours. The dataset includes raw behavioural scoring tables, trial metadata, and analysis-ready processed tables used in the statistical models.

No animals were sacrificed for the purpose of data collection; model stimuli were taxidermied individuals that died in earlier breeding seasons. Uploaded scripts: scripts to clean raw output from BORIS coding software: 1.0_PSB_cleanBORISraw_FUNCTIONS.Rmd 1.1_PSB_cleanBORISraw_QUALI.Rmd 1.2_PSB_cleanBORISraw_QUANTI.Rmd scripts to run analyses and plotting: 2.0_PSB_Analysis_FUNCTIONS.Rmd 2.1.1_PSB_Analysis_QUALI_brm_hg.Rmd 2.1.2_PSB_Analysis_QUALI_overview panels.Rmd 2.1.3_PSB_Analysis_QUALI_additional_stuff.Rmd 2.2.1_PSB_Analysis_QUANTI_brm_hg_lme4.Rmd 2.2.2_PSB_Analysis_QUANTI_overview panels.Rmd 2.2.3_PSB_Analysis_QUANTI_additional_stuff.Rmd Note: large functions are often defined in the first and called in the other scripts.