Data from: Constraints imposed by a natural landscape override offspring fitness effects to shape oviposition decisions in wild forked fungus beetles

Oviposition site decisions often maximize offspring fitness, but costs
constraining choice can cause females to oviposit in poor developmental
environments. It is unclear whether these constraints cumulatively
outweigh offspring fitness to determine oviposition decisions in wild
populations. Understanding how constraints shape oviposition in natural
landscapes is a critical step toward revealing how maternal behavior
influences fundamental phenomena like the evolution of specialization and
the use of "sink" environments. Here, we applied genetic
capture-recapture to reconstruct the oviposition decisions of individual
females in a natural metapopulation of a beetle (Bolitotherus cornutus)
that oviposits on three fungus species. We measured larval fitness-related
traits (mass, development time, survival) on each fungus, and compared the
oviposition preferences of females in laboratory versus field tests.
Larval fitness differed substantially among fungi, and females preferred a
high-quality (high larval fitness) fungus in laboratory trials. However,
females frequently laid eggs on the lowest-quality fungus in the wild.
They preferred high-quality fungi when moving between oviposition sites,
but this preference disappeared as the distance between sites increased
and was inconsistent between study plots. Our results suggest constraints
on oviposition preferences in natural landscapes are sufficiently large to
drive oviposition in poor developmental environments even when offspring
fitness consequences are severe.