Experimental evolution reveals trade-offs between sexual selection and heat tolerance in Drosophila prolongata

Sexual selection promotes traits that enhance mating or fertilization success, but these traits can be very costly under harsh environmental conditions. The extent to which differential investment in costly traits under varying intensities of sexual selection is related to their susceptibility to environmental stress remains unclear. This study explored how experimental evolution under different operational sex ratios (OSRs) shapes traits and reproductive success of male Drosophila prolongata, and how developmental and/or adult heat stress affect the expression of these traits. We found males from even and slightly male-biased OSRs to be larger and display greater reduction in body size under developmental heat stress, suggesting pre-mating sexual selection on body size and condition-dependent thermal sensitivity. These populations also exhibited consistently high mating and fertilization success across temperatures, potentially indicating selection for robust phenotypes with ‘good gene..., , , # Experimental evolution reveals trade-offs between sexual selection and heat tolerance in Drosophila prolongata

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4xgxd25mr](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4xgxd25mr)

## Description of the data and file structure

### Files and variables

The data corresponds to the experiment described in the paper.

These are the explanations for the columns in the data set:

* **uniqueID**: unique identifier for each individual male
* **Block**: Refers to the starting day of the mating experiment (A-F)
* **Line:** Identifier of the replicate population
* **DevTemp:** Developmental temperature treatment: Low or High (L or H)
* **AdTemp:** Adult heat exposure treatment: Low or High (L or H)
* **Mated_on:** date on which the mating occurred, if NA -> no mating, thus many of the other variables missing due to not having mated
* **start_time:** start time of mating
* **end_time:** end time of mating
* **first*_*check:** \"no\" if there was no larval development after the first...,