Data for: The suppression of a selfish genetic element increases a male's mating success in a fly
Data files
Nov 10, 2023 version files 70.20 KB
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LYTH_competitive_mate_trial_dryad_data.xlsx
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LYTH_single_mate_trial_dryad_data.xlsx
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README.md
Abstract
X chromosome meiotic drive (XCMD) kills Y-bearing sperm during spermatogenesis, leading to the biased transmission of the selfish X chromosome. Despite this strong transmission, some natural XCMD systems remain at low and stable frequencies, rather than rapidly spreading through populations. The reason may be that male carriers can have reduced fitness, as they lose half of their sperm, only produce daughters, and may carry deleterious alleles associated with XCMD. Thus, females may benefit from avoiding mating with male carriers, yielding a further reduction in fitness. Genetic suppressors of XCMD, which block the killing of Y sperm and restore fair Mendelian inheritance, are also common and could prevent the spread of XCMD. However, whether suppressed males are as fit as a wild-type male remains an open question, and the effect that genetic suppressors may have on a male’s mating success is rarely considered. Here, we investigate the mating ability of XCMD males and suppressed XCMD males in comparison to wild-type males in the fruit fly Drosophila subobscura, where drive remains at a stable frequency of 20% in wild populations where it occurs. We use both competitive and non-competitive mating trials to evaluate male mating success in this system. We found no evidence that unsuppressed XCMD males were discriminated against. Remarkably, however, their suppressed XCMD counterparts had a higher male mating success compared to wild-type controls. Unsuppressed XCMD males suffered 12% lower offspring production in comparison to wild-type males. This cost appears too weak to counter the transmission advantage of XCMD, and thus the factors preventing the spread of XCMD remain unclear.
README: Data for: The suppression of a selfish genetic element increases a male's mating success in a fly
We used single or competitive mate trials to determine the success of different male types. The males used either wildtype, carried meiotic drive, or a suppressed version of meiotic drive
For the single male mate trials we measured copulation success, copulation latency, copulation duration and the number of offspring produced.
For the competitive mate trial, two males were competed against each other to gain access to a single female. We competed every combination of male type and recorded which male won the mating
We found that any male that carried the suppressor genes had an increased mating success.
Description of the data and file structure
Single male mate trial
See file "LYTH_single_mate_trial_dryad_data.xlsx"
Each row corresponds to an individual male.
SR = Males that carry a driving X chromosome
ST = Standard males that do not carry a driving X chromosome
Suppressed_SR = SR males that are suppressed
"SR_or_ST" refers to the male type; ST, SR or suppressed SR
"Drive_type" refers to the geographic origin of each isoline that was used. The first term before the "/" denotes where the driving X chromosome originated and the term after the "/" states where the autosomes are from. In cases where there are only one term - these were normal males that had a standard X chromosome originating from the same place as the autosomes.
"Mating_sucess" refers to whether a male gained a successful mating during the mate trial
"Latency" refers to how long it took each male to gain a mating
"Duration" refers to how long the mating lasted for
"Offspring" refers to whether offspring was produced after the mating. This was recorded as binary data.
"Total_Offspring" refers to the number of offspring that each male produced
Units:
Latency and Duration were measured in seconds.
In the mating success column: the presence of an NA means that male did not gain a sucessful mating during the 2 hours of the mating trial.
Competitive mate trial
See file "LYTH_competitive_mate_trial_dryad_data.xlsx"
Each row corresponds to an individual male.
SR = Males that carry a driving X chromosome
ST_susceptible = standard (wildtype) males that have genes susceptible to a driving X chromosome
ST_suppressing = standard (wildtype) males that have the suppressing genes
Suppressed_SR = SR males that are suppressed
"Cross" refers to the male types of the competitive pair
"Male_id" refers to individual male types
"Mated_or_unmated" refers to whether the male won the mating (recorded as mated) or lost the mating (recorded as unmated).
Methods
This data was collected through running a series of competitive and non-competitive mate trials.
See the README.md file for details of the data set.