Nutrition affects larval survival and the development of morphological traits in male and female flour beetles, but genital size and shape remain canalized

The caloric content and macronutrient ratio of the diet consumed is a major source of phenotypic variation in most animal populations. While these nutritional effects have been well-documented for a variety of life-history and morphological traits, the effects of nutrition on male genitals are poorly understood but genitals are thought to be more canalised than general morphology and hence less susceptible to variation in nutrition. Even less is known about the effects of nutrition on female genital form, which to our knowledge, have never been investigated. Here we tested for the effects of juvenile dietary macronutrients (protein and carbohydrate) on larval survival, and adult morphology, including genital size and shape in male and female flour beetles (Tribolium castaneum). We found there was nutritionally induced plasticity in larval survival and morphology, although the latter effect was variable, with body size being most responsive to dietary macronutrients and genital size and ..., The size of the male and female beetles was a simple, linear measurement of body and elytra size. The size and shape (4 relative warps) of male and female genitalia were extracted using geometric morphometrics. The data was z-score transformed before analysis and the details of the analysis are provided in the manuscript. The survival data had a binomial distribution, so a binary GLMM fitted in the MCMCglmm package of R (version 3.1.2; Hadfield 2010) to test the statistical significance of these coefficients. The full details for these analyses are provided in the Supplementary Info, Text S2.
The genitalia were dissected using a dissecting microscope (Leica125, Leica Microsystems Ltd., Bletchley, UK), and an image was captured using a digital microscope camera (Pixelink M20-CYL). These images are unavailable (the student completed her studies in 2016 and has employment elsewhere). The details for the morphometrics analysis are provided in the manuscript but we also include 1) the links ..., , # Nutrition affects larval survival and the development of morphological traits in male and female flour beetles, but genital size and shape remain canalized

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.z8w9ghxmb](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.z8w9ghxmb)

This data package contains 3 Excel files with raw data and 3 .csv files of the same data. 

1. Genitals_nutrition_SurvivalData = the survival of larvae (0 = death, 1 = survived) when developing in 1 of 24 diets
2. RawMaleMorphologyData17_06_2024 = the morphology of male offspring that survived to eclosion
3. RawFemaleMorphologyData17_06_2024 = the morphology of female offspring

## Version changes:

**12-sept-2024:** we have included the raw cartesian coordinates for the fixed and semi-landmarks for every male (file name = NGMalAllDiets) and every female (file name = NGFemAllDiets) genitalia. We also include a 'slider file' for male (file name = MSliders) and female (file name = fsliders) genitalia which defines which landmarks are fixed and those...