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. 2019 Feb 25;374(1770):20180117. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2018.0117

Table 2.

Effects of dominant female treatments (cortisol or control) on litter characteristics and pup survival. Results are from a linear mixed-effects model (LMM; no. pups emerged) or generalized linear mixed-effects models (GLMMs, all other response variables) that each contained random intercept terms for dominant female identity and year. No GLMM was overdispersed as indicated by the goodness of fit tests (R package aods3, p-values from Pearson χ2 tests ranged from 0.13 to 1.00). The number of litters aborted by untreated females was not known so we only assessed the effects of cortisol versus control treatments on the number of litters aborted. Litter sex ratio is the proportion of males in the litter. Reference value for treatment (in the intercept) was cortisol-treated mothers. Data other than no. litters aborted are based upon an initial sample size of offspring from untreated (185 pups from 52 litters produced by 21 dominant females), control (25 pups from 6 litters produced by 6 females), or cortisol-treated (31 pups from 8 litters produced by 7 females) litters that produced pups that emerged from the burrow.

response variable fixed effect b s.e. t or z p-value
no. litters aborted
intercept −1.21 0.66 −1.83 0.07
birthdate −0.17 0.59 −0.29 0.77
treatment
 control −0.59 1.27 −0.46 0.64
no. pups emerged
intercept 3.84 0.41 9.31 <0.0001
birthdate 0.27 0.15 1.78 0.08
treatment
 control 0.37 0.63 0.59 0.56
 none −0.28 0.44 −0.63 0.53
litter sex ratio
intercept −0.55 0.30 −1.85 0.064
birthdate 0.03 0.12 0.26 0.79
treatment
 control −0.1 0.45 −0.23 0.82
 none 0.09 0.33 0.27 0.78
proportion litter surviving to three months
intercept −0.16 0.27 −0.62 0.53
birthdate −0.12 0.11 −1.09 0.27
treatment
 control 0.06 0.39 0.16 0.87
 none −0.19 0.30 −0.64 0.52
proportion litter surviving to six months
intercept −0.32 0.28 −1.16 0.24
birthdate −0.19 0.11 −1.65 0.099
treatment
 control 0.21 0.40 0.52 0.60
 none −0.28 0.31 −0.91 0.36
proportion litter surviving to 12 months
intercept −0.91 0.46 −1.999 0.046
birthdate −0.22 0.14 −1.58 0.11
treatment
 control 0.36 0.46 0.79 0.43
 none 0.096 0.38 0.25 0.80