Data from: Animal personalities influence male mating behavior and reproductive fitness
Data files
Nov 28, 2024 version files 83.56 KB
-
mating.xlsx
39.81 KB
-
personality.xlsx
41.75 KB
-
README.md
2 KB
Abstract
The relationship between individual personality and sexual selection has the potential to provide insights into how variation in personality traits is maintained. However, whether and how individuals with different personality traits have different mating behaviors and the fitness consequences has remained largely unexplored. We tested the hypothesis that male individuals have different mating behavior depending on their personality traits, and that there are fitness effects of personality traits. To do so, we conducted trials to quantify personality traits and observed mating behavior under standardized conditions in the red flour beetle (Tribolium castaneum). We also collected the number of offspring produced by their female mates to assess the association between male personality and their reproductive fitness. We found that male beetles showed consistent inter-individual differences in walking distance, emergence time from shelter and death-feigning time, which likely corresponding to two personality traits of activity and boldness. Although larger males had higher mating success and produced more offspring, some personality traits were also strongly related to mating behavior and reproductive fitness. Males with longer walking distances tended to seek female mates more promptly. Other than the morphological trait of body size, the emergence time from shelter (boldness) also showed a positive relationship with the number of mating and offspring reproduced. Furthermore, we found that the interaction between death-feigning time and walking distance in males influenced the number of mating they obtain, with either shy but active or bold but inactive males achieving more matings. We therefore highlight that alongside morphological traits, certain personality traits can also play a role in affecting mating behaviors and even reproductive fitness in males.
https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qbzkh18t4
Description of the data and file structure
This dataset represents the results of repeated measurements of four personality traits (walking distance, emergence from shelter, death-feigning and patch discovery), three mating behaviors (the latency to first mating, number of mating, and mean duration of each mating) and two reproductive fitness (number of offspring and fertilized females) in male red flour beetles (Tribolium castaneum).
Files and variables
File: mating.xlsx
Description: mating behaviors, reproductive fitness and different personality and morphological traits
Variables
- ID: ID of a male beetle; block: time block; act (blup): walking distance calculated by the average BLUP; eme (blup): emergence time calculated by the average BLUP; death (blup): death-feigning time calculated by the average BLUP; nmating: number of matings; avgdur: average mating duration (s); latency: latency to first mating (s); nmf: number of fertilized female; nmoff: number of offspring produced; mass: body mass (g); leg: hind femur length (mm); plength: pronotum length (mm); pwidth: pronotum width (mm); elength: elytrum length (mm); ewidth: elytrum width (mm), PC1; rsleg: relative leg length.
File: personality.xlsx
Description: Repeated measurements of four personality traits, environmental temperature and morphological characteristics.
Variables
- ID: ID of a male beetle; block: time block; activity: walking distance (cm); emergence: emergence time from shelter (s); patch: patch discovery time (s); Death-feigning: Death-feigning time (s); Tem_a, Tem_e, Tem_p, Tem_d: temperature during different personality tests, i.e., walking distance, emergence time from shelter,patch discovery time and death-feigning time (°C); PC1; rsleg: relative leg length.
For details on the methods see the Material and Methods section in the article.