Living with males leads to female physical injury in the leaf-footed cactus bug

Males in many species possess sexually selected weapons that they use to fight for mating opportunities. It is well established that male-male competition can lead to physical injuries for males. However, very few studies have looked at the physical consequences for conspecific females. We hypothesized that living with males in a species with male-male competition would result in female injury. Because larger female invertebrates typically have greater reproductive output, they have higher resource value for males and can elicit aggression and fighting. Thus, we further hypothesized that larger females in this context would receive more injuries. For this study, we focused on the leaf-footed cactus bug, Narnia femorata (Hemiptera: Coreidae), a species of insect in which males fight using their spiny and enlarged hindlegs. In just two hours of observation, we documented males competing with other males in 61% of 103 trials. In 43% of these 63 competitions, females were physical..., Insect rearing
We used Narnia femorata (Stål, 1892) (Hemiptera: Coreidae) from a lab colony established in 2022 and supplemented in 2023 with wild-caught individuals from Live Oak, Florida (30.2642 N°, 83.1768° W). All the insects were kept in a rearing room with temperatures ranging from 26–28 °C. We reared nymphs in plastic deli cups capped with mesh lids. We kept the density at 5-20 siblings per cup since nymphs are usually found in groups in nature (Allen and Miller 2020). We also provided each cup with a prickly pear cactus pad (Opuntia mesacantha ssp. lata) planted in soil with an adjacent cactus fruit. We monitored the quality of cacti and cactus fruit throughout the project and moved bugs to a new cup if cactus quality declined.
When the nymphs emerged into their penultimate instar, we separated each one into an individual deli cup with a planted cactus pad and a fruit. They were kept in deli cups by themselves to minimize social interactions and to ensure the females remained u..., # Living with males leads to female physical injury in the leaf-footed cactus bug

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.573n5tbm2](10.5061/dryad.573n5tbm2)

## Description of the data and file structure

This dataset contains the data for our experimental study investigating the effect of living with multiple males on female physical injury in a species with male-male competition. We used *Narnia femorata* (Hemiptera: Coreidae), the leaf-footed cactus bug, as our model system. The data cover 103 groups for two treatments: 1) female-only treatment, and 2) mixed-sex treatment. Through the experiment, we documented male competing behavior in 61% of the mixed-sex treatment. In 43% of these 63 competitions, females were physically contacted and sometimes attacked with a kick or squeeze. For the 74 hours that we left the insects in their social groups, we found that females living with multiple males were more likely to obtain injuries (26.2% of 103 trials) compared to those living only with females (...,