Data for: Beyond Simple vs Complex: Exploring the Nuanced and Unexpected Effects of Spatial Environmental Complexity on Mating Patterns and Female Fecundity

The features of the physical environment set the stage upon which sexual selection operates, and consequently can have a significant impact on variation in realized individual fitness, and influence a population’s evolutionary trajectory. This phenomenon has been explored empirically in several studies using fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) which found that changing the spatial complexity of the mating environment influenced male-female interaction dynamics, (re)mating rates and realized female fecundities. However, these studies did not explore mating patterns, which can dramatically influence the genetic composition of the next generation, and restricted themselves to a single binary comparison between “simple” and “complex” environments. Our study set out to compare patterns of mating and courtship between large- and small-bodied males and females, and female fecundities in both a simple environment and two distinctly different spatially-complex environments. We found that realized offspring production patterns differed dramatically between all three environments, indicating that that the effects of increasing spatial complexity on mating outcomes are not one-size-fits all, and appear to be sensitive to the specific type of environmental complexity present in the environment. Furthermore, we observed female fecundities were higher for flies in both complex environments compared those in the simple environment, supporting its role as a mediator of sexual conflict. Together, these results show that the union of gametes within a population can be greatly influenced by the specific spatial features of the environment and that simply comparing a “simple” environment with a “complex” environment may underestimate plasticity in mating decisions, and its potentially its consequences for the future. This dataset contains recorded observation data on behaviour and count data on offspring production.