Studies investigating the trade-off between current and future reproduction often find that increased allocation to current reproduction is associated with a reduction in the number or quality of future offspring. In species that provide parental care, this effect on future offspring may be mediated through a reduced future ability to provide care. Here, we test this idea in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides, a species in which parents shift the cost of reproduction towards future offspring and provide elaborate parental care. We manipulated brood size to alter the costs females experienced in association with current reproduction and measured the level of parental care during a subsequent breeding attempt. Given that these beetles breed on carcasses of small vertebrates, it is important to consider confounding effects due to benefits associated with resource access during breeding. We therefore manipulated access to carrion and measured the level of parental care during a subsequent breeding attempt. We found that females provided the same level of care regardless of previous brood size and resource access, suggesting that neither affected future ability to provide care. This may reflect that parents feed on carrion during breeding, which may buffer against any costs of previous breeding attempts. Our results show that increased allocation to current reproduction is not necessarily associated with a reduction in future ability to provide care. Nevertheless, this may reflect unique aspects of our study system, and we encourage future work on systems where parents do not have access to a rich resource during breeding.

This data file consists of a comma separated values spreadsheet (.csv), which provides data on the effects of reproductive allocation and carcass access during a current breeding attempt on the level of post-hatching care provided during a subsequent breeding attempt. Each line in the spreadsheet represents an individual female.

female_id – individual ID of the female.

eclosion – date of eclosion.

death – date of death.

lifespan – number of days lived from eclosion to death.

treatment – experimental treatment (nb = non-breeding females without access to a carcass,  nbc = non-breeding females with access to a carcass, large = breeding female allocated a brood of 40 larvae, small = breeding female allocated a brood of 10 larvae)

mouse_stage_one – mass of the mouse provided during stage one (g).

female_mass_pre_stage_one - female mass prior to stage one (g).

female_mass_post_stage_one - female mass after to stage one (g).

female_mass_change_stage_one - female mass change during stage one (g).

brood_mass_stage_one - mass of the brood of larvae at dispersal from the carcass during stage one (g).

brood_size_stage_one – number of larvae in the brood at dispersal from the carcass during stage one (g).

mouse_stage_two – mass of the mouse provided during stage two (g).

female_mass_pre_stage_two - female mass prior to stage two (g).

female_mass_post_stage_two - female mass after to stage two (g).

female_mass_change_stage_two - female mass change during stage two (g).

eggs – the number of eggs laid during stage two.

brood_mass_stage_two - mass of the brood of larvae at dispersal from the carcass during stage two (g).

brood_size_stage_one – number of larvae in the brood at dispersal from the carcass during stage two (g).

freq_maintain – the number of scans out of 30 that the females was seen maintaining the carcass.

freq_feed – the number of scans out of 30 that the females was seen food provisioning larvae.

freq_other - the number of scans out of 30 that the females was seen doing any other behaviour.