Data associated with the publication: Magdalena Herdegen-Radwan (2022)Can female guppies learn to like male colours? A test of the role of associative learning in originating sexual preferences. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Summary of the project aim and results: FHow do female sexual preferences for male ornamental traits arise? The developmental origins of female preferences are still an understudied area, with most explanations pointing to genetic mechanisms. One intriguing, little-explored, alternative focuses on the role of associative learning in driving this process. According to this hypothesis, a preference learned in an ecological context can be transferred into a sexual context, resulting in changes in mating preferences as a by-product. I tested this hypothesis by first training female guppies to associate either orange or black colour with food delivery; I then presented videos of males with computer-manipulated coloured spots and measured female preference towards them. I also allowed females from both treatments to mate with males differing in their ratio of orange-to-black spots and measured the males’ reproductive success. After training, female sexual preferences significantly diverged among treatments in the expected direction. In addition, orange males sired a greater proportion of offspring with females food-conditioned on orange compared to those conditioned on black. These results show that mating preferences can arise as a by-product of associative learning, which, via translation into variation in male fitness, can become associated with indirect genetic benefits, potentially leading to further evolution. DATA FILES DESCRIPTION: 1) data_preference_SC This file contains data on sexual preferences of the experimental females for video-manipulated animated images of SC (single-coloured) males: orange or balck spottted 2) data_preference_MC_before_cond: This file contains data on sexual preferences of the experimental females before conditioning for video-manipulated animated images of MC (mixed-coloured) males: orange-dominant or balck-dominant spottted 3) data_preference_MC_after_cond: This file contains data on sexual preferences of the experimental females after conditioning for video-manipulated animated images of MC (mixed-coloured) males: orange-dominant or balck-dominant spottted 4) data_paternity: This file contains data on reproducitve success of orange-dominant and black-dominant males in competitve trials awhere they were mated with one black- and one ornage-conditioned female Description of variables present in the file: -TREATMENT: experimental groups food-conditioned on different colours: BLACK - females conditioned on black colour in foraging context; ORANGE - males conditioned on orange colour in foraging context -BLOCK: number ID of the experimental block (1-6) -TRIAL: trial number, preferences of each female were tested twice -AQUARIUM: number ID of the aquarium in which the female was kept during the experiment and conditioned(1-10) -FEMALE ID: a unique number for individual identification -FEMALE SIZE: categorical (small, big - relative to the other female in pair)for preference data; continuous (in pixels) for mating data -MODEL:number of the variant of the model (1-5, see Fig.S2) -ORNG(-DOM) MALE SIDE: aquarium side (left (L) or right (R)) at which the orange(or orange-dominant) male model was displayed -PROP TIME WITH ORNG(-DOM): proportion of time each female spent in the preference zone of the orange(-dominant) male; response variable in the preference experiment -N OFFSPRING OF BLACK/ORANGE MALE: number of offspring each male sired with the female conditioned on black/orange colour; response variable in the mating experiment For more details on requarding the analyses methods please consult the publication or contact Magdalena Herdegen-Radwan, magher@amu.edu.pl