Frequency of reproduction and within-season nesting parameters
Out of the 31 females, 26 of them nested for only one season. The remaining five females were observed nesting across consecutive seasons. Among these, four had offspring in two seasons and one had offspring for three seasons, indicating an annual reproduction cycle for these females (Table 1). Each of them laid between 3 and 9 clutches sired by a unique male over the period. The interval between the first and last clutch was 359 to 673 days. For these females, we did not find any other clutch sired by other males within this period.
In a single season, females laid between 1 and 10 clutches (Supplementary Data 5), with an average of 3.2 nests per female. The most common nesting interval was 11 to 14 days, with variations ranging from 0 to 94 days (Figure 4). Six clutches followed a first egg-laying event by only 0 to 3 days (± 3 days), indicating that a single female can lay several clutches in a very short time interval, possibly on the same day. The size of these clutches varied between 39 and 103 eggs (mean 79 eggs), which was not different from the mean clutch size of the total sample (84 eggs, t-test p-value= 0.43) (Supplementary Data 6).
Of the 27 reconstructed males, 18 were assigned offspring in only one season. Eight males were assigned offspring in 2 seasons, with 7 of them doing so consecutively and one with a gap period of 3 years. One male was assigned offspring in three consecutive seasons. Among these 9 males, 6 sired different females in the consecutive seasons. Within one season, 24 of the 27 males sired a single female. Two males sired 2 different females, and 1 male sired 3 females in the same season.