Data from: Change in sex pheromone expression by nutritional shift in male cockroaches

Environmental conditions during sexual maturation impact sexual signal
expression, but little is known about how individual histories of changing
environmental conditions affect the intensity of male sexual
advertisement. We investigated the effects of shifting dietary nutrient
composition (protein vs. carbohydrates) in male Nauphoeta cinerea
cockroaches on consumption, final lipid reserves, and sex pheromone levels
subsequent to completing sexual maturation on a specific diet, at high and
low concentration of dietary nutrients. Consumption, lipid reserves, and
sex pheromone levels were highly affected by dietary nutrient composition
with higher values on carbohydrate-biased diet, and males had
significantly higher and lower levels of consumption, lipid reserves, and
sex pheromones when shifted to a carbohydrate-biased and a protein-biased
diet, respectively, compared with males maintained on either initial diet
throughout the experiment. Males shifted to a carbohydrate-biased diet at
high nutrient concentration fully recouped their sex pheromone levels,
attaining levels that were not significantly lower than those in males
maintained on carbohydrate-biased diet at high nutrient concentration
throughout the experiment. Our study shows that male sexual display in N.
cinerea is plastic and highly affected by present as well as previous
dietary conditions. Signaling of adaptive quality through male sex
pheromones can therefore vary dynamically within the early adult life of a
male in response to the nutritional composition of food that is available
to ingest. This contrasts morphological sexual traits in arthropods that
are affected during development and are fixed at adulthood.