Perceived mate availability does not influence variation in egg-laying patterns in the Hawaiian Pacific field cricket (Orthoptera: Gryllidae)
Data files
Oct 21, 2025 version files 28.37 KB
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egglaying_analysis.R
13.17 KB
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egglayingdata.csv
12.69 KB
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README.md
2.50 KB
Abstract
Here we study whether cues that reflect perceived mate availability (presence of acoustic sexual signals) influence egg-laying patterns in Teleogryllus oceanicus. Further, we are interested in understanding if variation in egg-laying patterns affect females’ future egg-laying or total reproductive output. This work is motivated by an interest in understanding whether trade-offs in temporal reproductive allocation over the course of an individual's lifetime can help females balance the costs and benefits of multiple mating. Our data consist of the number of eggs laid by females across the study period, and individual measures of body size, age, and other treatment variables. We find that on hearing male calling song to simulate high mate availability, females did not alter their egg-laying patterns relative to those that did not hear song. Neither investing highly in current over future egg-laying, nor having a highly variable egg-laying pattern, appeared to be costly in this species.
Description of the data and file structure
The data were generated through monitoring the egg-laying patterns of Teleogryllus oceanicus crickets in the lab over 2 weeks, after exposure to a song or no song treatment simulating extremes of mate availability.
Files and variables
File: egglayingdata.csv
Description: The file is an .csv file containing data collected during the experiment and some later processing for analysis. Each line represents a a single individual. Missing values were represented by '-'.
Variables
- cricketno - individual identification number for each cricket
- genotype - representing if the female was from the flatwing (FW) or normal-wing (NW) colony in the lab
- sex - all were females (F)
- female_pw - female pronotum width measured in mm
- eclosiondate - date of adult eclosion for each female (mm/dd/yyyy)
- matingdate- date of mating for each female (mm/dd/yyyy)
- adult_age_at_mating - number of days between matingdate and eclosiondate
- age_group - females were binned into 3 age groups based on adult_age_at_mating; 7 days = young, 10 days = mid, 12 days = old
- male_pw male pronotum width measured in mm
- treatment - females were raised in either Song (with playback) or NoSong (silent, no playback)
- T1, T2... T6 - timepoints at which the number of eggs laid by each female was counted. the number of eggs in the cells is the number of eggs laid. T1 = 2 days after mating, T2 = 4 days after mating, T3 = 7 days after mating, T4 = 9 days after mating, T5 = 11 days after mating, T6 = 14 days after mating.
- Total - sum of T1 through to T6, total number of eggs laid over 14 days
- rate_t1 - number of eggs laid at T1 divided by 2 (2 here is the number of days between T1 and the previous time point, which in this case start of monitoring). rate_t2 through to rate_t6 also were calculated similarly.
- week1 - T1+T2+T3/Total
- avg_rate - average of rate_t1 + rate_t2 through to rate_t6, divided by 6
- std_dev - standard deviation of all the rates (t1 to t6)
- z1 to z6 - z-score for the each respective timepoint, calculated as [rate_t1 - avg_rate/std_dev]. t1 can be t1 through t6
- average_z - the average of z1 through z6
Code/software
Code used to process the data was run in R, the script for the same is called egglaying_analysis.R. Version details are in the manuscript.