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Data from: Condition dependent mortality exacerbates male (but not female) reproductive senescence and the potential for sexual conflict

Cite this dataset

Sultanova, Zahida; García-Roa, Roberto; Carazo, Pau (2020). Data from: Condition dependent mortality exacerbates male (but not female) reproductive senescence and the potential for sexual conflict [Dataset]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.wwpzgmsgc

Abstract

Disentangling the relationship between age and reproduction is central to understand life-history evolution, and recent evidence shows that considering condition-dependent mortality is a crucial piece of this puzzle. For example, non-random mortality of “low-condition” individuals can lead to an increase in average lifespan. However, selective disappearance of such low-condition individuals may also affect reproductive senescence at the population level due to trade-offs between physiological functions related to survival/lifespan and the maintenance of reproductive functions. Here, we address the idea that condition-dependent extrinsic mortality (i.e. simulated predation) may increase the age-related decline in male reproductive success, and with it the potential for sexual conflict, by comparing reproductive ageing in Drosophila melanogaster male/female cohorts exposed (or not) to condition-dependent simulated predation across time. While female reproductive senescence was not affected by predation, male reproductive senescence was considerably higher under predation, due mainly to an accelerated decline in offspring viability of “surviving” males with age. This sex-specific effect suggests that condition-dependent extrinsic mortality can exacerbate survival-reproductive trade-offs in males, which are typically under stronger condition-dependent selection than females. Interestingly, condition-dependent extrinsic mortality did not affect mating success, hinting that accelerated reproductive senescence is due to a decrease in male post-copulatory fitness components. Our results support the recent proposal that male ageing can be an important source of sexual conflict, further suggesting this effect could be exacerbated under more natural conditions.

Methods

Data for the manuscript accepted in Journal of Evolutionary Biology titled as: "Condition dependent mortality exacerbates male (but not female) reproductive senescence and the potential for sexual conflict". In the csv file the variables are as follows: code (code of the experimental vial together with experiment name), ageing_f ("young" for young females, "selection" for old females that survived condition dependent mortality, "no_selection" for old females that were not exposed to condition dependent mortality), ageing_m ("young" for young males, "selection" for old males that survived condition dependent mortality, "no_selection" for old males that were not exposed to condition dependent mortality), ms (mating success), md (mating duration in minutes), ml (mating latency in minutes), egg (number of eggs), fit (number of offspring), viab (number of offspring/number of eggs), experiment (2 for main experiment, 1A for pilot experiment without condition dependent mortality, 1B for pilot experiment with condition dependent mortality)