The reliability of environmental cues shapes learning and selection against deleterious alleles in seed beetles

Behavioural plasticity can play a key role in evolution by either facilitating or impeding genetic adaptation. The latter occurs when behaviours mitigate selection pressures that otherwise would target associated traits. Therefore, environments that facilitate adaptive behavioural plasticity could relax the strength of natural selection, but experimental evidence for this prediction remains scarce. Here, we first demonstrate that maternal care in the beetle Callosobruchus maculatus is dependent on reliable environmental cues that allow females to reduce larval competition via learning and informed oviposition choices. We show that this facilitation of maternal care relaxes selection against deleterious alleles in offspring. We further find that mothers of low genetic quality generally provide poorer care. However, when receiving reliable environmental cues, the increased opportunity for learning reduced genetic differences in maternal care, further relaxing selection against deleterious..., , # The reliability of environmental cues shapes learning and selection against deleterious alleles in seed beetles

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.66t1g1kcn](10.5061/dryad.66t1g1kcn)

## Description of the data and file structure

All data come from: i) behavioral assays during which beetle movement and egg-laying behavior, and oviposited eggs were registered, and ii) an experiment comparing juvenile (egg-to-adult) survival of the focal species (*Callosobruchus maculatus*) in competition with its sister species (*C. phaseoli*).

### Files and variables

#### File: Lynne_files_for_analyses.zip

**Description:** 

Zipped file containing all datasets (11) and accompanying R-code for analyses.

---

#### BEHAVIORAL OBSERVATIONS - HOST SEARCH

**\"behav\":**

Data on female host search from trials with two treatments run at the same time, with variables:

* trial (1 to 12 - two treatments run together in one trial)
* plate (ID for five females running together during the five runs)
* line (the gen...,