Data and code from: Social plasticity and individuality shape variation in contest behaviour

Physical contests are critical in most animals in determining access to limited resources such as territories, food, and sexual partners. Individuals should base their decision to engage and escalate a contest on the potential returns and the probability of winning against a specific opponent. Although variation in competitive ability should maintain variation in contest behaviour within populations, there is limited empirical evidence demonstrating that differences in contest behaviour arise from differences in competitive ability at the individual level. Here, we used an inbred line of the highly territorial and aggressive fly Drosophila prolongata to test how pre-existing variation in competitive ability drives phenotypic variation in contest behaviour. Specifically, we quantified the degree to which individual differences in two key traits determining competitive ability, body size and weapon size, contribute to variation in territoriality and aggressiveness. Although territoriality..., , Data, analysis script and associated files for:

Kikodze E, Ratz T, (submitted) Social plasticity and individuality shape variation in contest behaviour

Data collected by EK. Please refer to the manuscript for data collection methods and statistical analyses. For questions or to notify the authors if any errors are identified in the data, please contact Dr. Tom Ratz ([[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])).

Please note: in the .csv files, commas are used as decimal delimiters. Missing or unavailable data are indicated by NA.

### DATA_morphology.csv

\* These data were used to assess the body size and the size of the foreleg segments of experimental males.

columnHeading: description

\------------- -----------

id: Identity of the experimental male from 01 to 55

femur_length: Length of the foreleg femur in mm

femur_width: Width of the foreleg femur in mm

tibia_length: Length of the foreleg tibia in mm

tibia_width: Width of the foreleg tibia in mm

tarsus_length: Length...,