Data from: Spatially varying selection shapes life history clines among populations of Drosophila melanogaster from sub-Saharan Africa

Clines in life history traits, presumably driven by spatially varying
selection, are widespread. Major latitudinal clines have been observed,
for example, in Drosophila melanogaster, an ancestrally tropical insect
from Africa that has colonized temperate habitats on multiple continents.
Yet, how geographic factors other than latitude, such as altitude or
longitude, affect life history in this species remains poorly understood.
Moreover, most previous work has been performed on derived European,
American and Australian populations, but whether life history also varies
predictably with geography in the ancestral Afro-tropical range has not
been investigated systematically. Here, we have examined life history
variation among populations of D. melanogaster from sub-Saharan Africa.
Viability and reproductive diapause did not vary with geography, but body
size increased with altitude, latitude and longitude. Early fecundity
covaried positively with altitude and latitude, whereas lifespan showed
the opposite trend. Examination of genetic variance–covariance matrices
revealed geographic differentiation also in trade-off structure, and
QST-FST analysis showed that life history differentiation among
populations is likely shaped by selection. Together, our results suggest
that geographic and/or climatic factors drive adaptive phenotypic
differentiation among ancestral African populations and confirm the widely
held notion that latitude and altitude represent parallel gradients.