Experimental evolution reveals trade-offs between sexual selection and heat tolerance in Drosophila prolongata
Data files
May 30, 2025 version files 342.12 KB
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README.md
2.20 KB
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uploaded_data.csv
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Abstract
Sexual selection promotes traits that enhance mating or fertilization success, but these traits can be very costly under harsh environmental conditions. The extent to which differential investment in costly traits under varying intensities of sexual selection is related to their susceptibility to environmental stress remains unclear. This study explored how experimental evolution under different operational sex ratios (OSRs) shapes traits and reproductive success of male Drosophila prolongata, and how developmental and/or adult heat stress affect the expression of these traits. We found males from even and slightly male-biased OSRs to be larger and display greater reduction in body size under developmental heat stress, suggesting pre-mating sexual selection on body size and condition-dependent thermal sensitivity. These populations also exhibited consistently high mating and fertilization success across temperatures, potentially indicating selection for robust phenotypes with ‘good genes’ that perform well regardless of temperature. Conversely, males from strongly male-biased OSR populations experienced more pronounced decline in sperm competitiveness following exposure to developmental or adult heat stress. These results highlight how environmental stressors differentially impact populations, shaped by varying strengths of pre- and post-mating sexual selection. These observed patterns suggest potential interactions between past selection and the ability to adapt to changing environments.
https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4xgxd25mr
Description of the data and file structure
Files and variables
The data corresponds to the experiment described in the paper.
These are the explanations for the columns in the data set:
- uniqueID: unique identifier for each individual male
- Block: Refers to the starting day of the mating experiment (A-F)
- Line: Identifier of the replicate population
- DevTemp: Developmental temperature treatment: Low or High (L or H)
- AdTemp: Adult heat exposure treatment: Low or High (L or H)
- Mated_on: date on which the mating occurred, if NA -> no mating, thus many of the other variables missing due to not having mated
- start_time: start time of mating
- end_time: end time of mating
- first_check: "no" if there was no larval development after the first mating
- ver_off: number of* vermillion* offspring --> from first male
- wt_off: number of wild type offspring --> from second male
- P2: second male paternity (untransformed)
- exclude: 1 if needs to be excluded (i.e., because no larval development after first mating and ver_off = 0 --> unsuccessful first mating; 0 not excluded
- total_female_offspring: number of female offspring
- thorax: thorax length as measured under stereoscope (divide by 4 for mm)
- testis_area: area of both testes combined in pixel (divide by 196.62 for mm2)
- time_frozen: time of freezing after mating (for testes replenishment): 2dl = 2 days later, dom = day of mating
- deformed: number of deformed testes: 0, 1 or 2
- intact_dissection: whether dissection led to clean result --> those with 0 excluded for testes analysis
- WL: Wing length in pixel
- WW: Wing width in pixel
- FLL: Foreleg length in pixel
- FLL_mm: Foreleg length in mm
- Tibia_A_sqmm: Tibia area in mm^2
- Femur_A_sqmm: Femur area in mm^2
NAs are data points that are "not available", e.g., due to males not having mated, we did not get P2 data and did not measure testes size.