Male experience buffers female laying date plasticity in a winter-breeding, food-storing passerine

Phenotypic plasticity allows individuals to adjust reproductive timing in response to variation in the environment but little is known about how other factors, such as habitat quality, social environment and experience, may influence adjustments in the timing of breeding. We evaluated intrinsic (female age), environmental and social factors influencing laying date plasticity and assessed the effect of laying date on reproductive success in a population of grey jays, Perisoreus canadensis, over nearly four decades (1978-2015). Grey jays rely on stored food during their late-winter nesting season, a unique life history context to study plasticity in reproductive timing. Overall, females tended to lay eggs earlier in response to higher prelaying temperatures and advanced laying date at similar rates over their lives. Male age interacted with both temperature and female age to influence laying date. Females mated to older males were more likely to breed earlier at lower temperatures than females mated to younger males but there was little effect of male age under warmer conditions. Similarly, younger females mated to older males were more likely to breed earlier than younger females mated to younger males but there was little effect of male age when females were older. Across all years, earlier laying relative to other breeders in the population led to higher probability of nest success and summer survival for dominant juveniles. Our results suggest that individual females adjust laying date in response to temperature and provide the first evidence that male experience plays an important, and probably underappreciated, role in how females adjust their timing of breeding over their lives and with respect to annual variation in the environment.