Data from: Sex-specific evolutionary potential of pre- and postcopulatory reproductive interactions in the field cricket, Teleogryllus commodus

Mate choice often depends on the properties of both sexes, such as the
preference and responsiveness of the female and the sexual display traits
of the male. Quantitative genetic studies, however, traditionally explore
the outcome of an interaction between males and females based solely on
the genotype of one sex, treating the other sex as a source of
environmental variance. Here we use a half-sib breeding design in the
field cricket, Teleogryllus commodus, to estimate the additive genetic
contribution of both partners to three steps of the mate choice process:
the time taken to mate; the duration of spermatophore attachment; and, the
intensity of mate guarding. Rather than each sex contributing equally to
the interactions, we found that genetic variation for latency to mate and
spermatophore attachment was sex-specific, and in the case of mate
guarding intensity, largely absent. For a given interaction, genetic
variation in one sex also appears to be largely independent of the other,
and is also uncorrelated with the other traits. We discuss how pre- and
post-copulatory interactions have the potential to evolve as an
interacting phenotype, but that any co-evolution between these traits, due
to sexual selection or sexual conflict, may be limited.