Persistence of the ecological niche in pond damselflies underlies a stable adaptive zone despite varying selection

Following the development of regression-based methods to estimate natural and sexual selection, evolutionary biologists have quantified the strength, mode, and direction of selection in natural populations. Although this approach has been successful, its limitations include the lack of replication across species, which compromises the generality of the inferences beyond microevolutionary time scales. Here, we carried out a comparative study of selection on wing shape and body size across multiple populations of two closely related pond damselflies: Enallagma cyathigerum and Ischnura elegans (Odonata: Coenagrionidae). We found weak stabilizing selection on wing shape in both sexes, and no evidence that selection on this trait differed between the species. In contrast, the selection of body size was curvilinear in males and directional in females, with differences in form (males) and intensity (females) between the species. By analyzing selection in each local pond, we found that selectio..., , # Persistence of the ecological niche in pond damselflies underlies a stable adaptive zone despite varying selection

**Authors**

Anjali Gupta, Erik I. Svensson, Henrik Frietsch and Masahito Tsuboi

**Contact**

[[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])

### Description

This data package contains morphological and ecological data of two pond damselfly species, *Ischnura elegans* and *Enallagma cyathigerum*, from southern Sweden. Data were obtained by the authors. Code was written by Anjali Gupta and Masahito Tsuboi.

**Data Files**

**Data is available in**

1. **Is_updated.csv**: Data file for opportunity of sexual selection and male mating success - derived from community sampling from 2018-2021. Units are specified in the main text. A description to each column in the data can be found below -

Species: *Ischnura elegans* / *Enallagma cyathigerum,*

Locale: Location site of specimen collected,

MaleMatingSuccess: mean proportion of male (belonging to one specie...,