Data from: Sex-specific fitness consequences of nutrient intake and the evolvability of diet preferences

The acquisition of nutrients is fundamental for the maintenance of bodily
functions, growth, and reproduction in animals. As a result, fitness can
be maximized only when animals are able to direct their attention to foods
that reflect their current nutritional needs. Despite significant
literature documenting the fitness consequences of nutrient composition
and preference, less is known about the underlying genetic architecture of
the dietary preferences themselves, specifically, the degree to which they
can respond to selection. We addressed this by integrating evolutionary
quantitative genetics and nutritional geometry to examine the shape of the
sex-specific fitness surfaces and the availability of genetic variance for
macronutrient preferences in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.
Combining these analyses, we found that the microevolutionary potential of
carbohydrate and protein preference was above average in this population,
because the expected direction of selection was relatively well aligned
with the major axis of the genetic variance-covariance matrix, G. We also
found that potential exists for sexually antagonistic genetic constraint
in this system; macronutrient blends maximizing fitness differed between
the sexes, and cross-sex genetic correlations for their consumption were
positive. However, both sexes were displaced from their feeding optima,
generating similar directional selection on males and females, with the
combined effect being that minimal sex-specific genetic constraints
currently affect dietary preferences in this population.