Data from: Evaluation of factors affecting greater prairie-chicken nest and brood survival

However, less attention has been given to how grassland birds respond to edges between structurally distinct vegetation patches within contiguous grasslands. Greater prairie-chickens (<em>Tympanuchus cupido pinnatus</em>) in the Flint Hills ecoregion select recently burned grasslands for brooding, and nest in areas that have been unburned for 1–3 years, suggesting the need for a mosaic of burn patches.

However, it is unknown how patch size, configuration, and proximity to edges within such mosaics affect reproductive vital rates. We investigated whether nest placement relative to three edge types (burn edges, water sources, and tree cover) influences nest survival and early brood success. With 11 years of nest data and 5 years of brood data, we used a multi-step model-building approach to account for known sources of variation in nest survival and brood success (i.e., temporal variables, female characteristics, drought, and weather) before modeling survival or success as a function of proximity to edges.