2015-01-13 This readme file describes the data files accompanying this publication in Ecology: "Natural selection by pulsed predation: survival of the thickest" by Bijleveld, Allert I., Twietmeyer, Sönke, Piechocki, Julia, van Gils, Jan A., Piersma, Theunis. For any further queries please contact: Allert Bijleveld at allert.bijleveld@gmail.com The following files are included: 1) "1_body_composition_density_dependence.csv" This file contains the data underlying the analyses of density dependence among cockles (figure 1 and Table 1) as well as for calculating relative body composition (online figure S2). An explanation of the variables is included in the supplementary file "1_body_composition_density_dependence_readme.txt". 2) "1_relative_body_composition.r" This is the R script to calculate relative cockle body compositions using the data from file 1: "1_body_composition_density_dependence.csv". 3) "2_spatial_density_distribution_predation.csv" This file contains the data underlying the analyses of spatial density distributions of cockles before and after predation (figure 2), and for calculating autocorrelation functions (figure 3). An explanation of the variables is included in the supplementary file "2_spatial_density_distribution_predation_readme.txt". 4) "3_body_composition_predation.csv" This is the data underlying the analyses of length distributions (figure 4) and cockle body composition (figure 5 and online Table S1) before and after predation by red knots, as well as for calculating selection gradients (Table 2). An explanation of the variables is included in the supplementary file "3_body_composition_predation_readme.txt".