Parasite and brood manipulation effects on nestling
growth
For the mass model, we expanded the dataset to include N = 506 nestlings
without telomere length information but born in the same period
(2012-2017) as the N = 322 nestlings included in the telomere model. In
this expanded data set, carnid flies were present in 247 out of the 317
nests and in 708 out of the 828 nestlings. Nestlings gained on average
135.9±1.3g over the 25-day measurement period (Table 1, mass model).
Body mass gain was not affected by Carnus presence, and neither
was there a significant interaction between brood size manipulation andCarnus presence (Table 1). However, nestlings reared in enlarged
broods gained on average 8.9±1.4g less mass than nestlings reared in
reduced broods (Table 1, Fig. 4). Mass gain was also significantly
different between sexes, with males gaining on average 19.4±1.4g more
mass than females (Table 1, Fig. S2).