Data and code for: How do birds maximize fitness in harsh climates where cooperative breeding meets a fast life history?

This repository contains the data, phylogenetic trees, and R code supporting the manuscript: "How do birds maximize fitness in harsh climates where cooperative breeding meets a fast life history?". Files: mediation_analysis.R: Main R script (MCMCglmm) for Bayesian phylogenetic mediation analyses. SMD_cooperative_breeding_data.csv: Data for SMD meta-analysis (44 species, 58 populations). lnRR_adult_survival_data.csv: Data for lnRR analysis (25 species). 44species1000times.nex / 25species1000times.nex: 1000 posterior phylogenetic trees (Nexus format). README.md: Full instructions and metadata. Methodology:We used Bayesian phylogenetic mixed models (MCMCglmm) with 1000 posterior trees to account for phylogenetic uncertainty. Six climate predictors and body mass (log10-transformed and scaled covariate) were included. The script runs SMD and lnRR analyses, producing an Excel file (mediation_results.xlsx) with posterior summaries (Mean, 95% CI, pMCMC) for Total, Direct, Indirect effects, and Path a/b. MCMC settings: 10,000 posterior samples per model. Reproduction:Requires R (≥ 4.0) and packages: MCMCglmm (≥ 2.33), ape, dplyr, openxlsx. Place all files in one directory, set working directory, and run source("mediation_analysis.R"). Runtime may be long; cluster computing is recommended. License: This dataset is shared to support the peer-review process of our double-blind submission. It is licensed under CC BY. If you use this data in your research, we kindly request that you properly cite this record using its DOI.