Data for: Anthropogenic light impacts life-history traits and induces a trade-off in female field crickets

Human-induced rapid environmental changes introduce animals to novel
selection pressures that may impact how individuals allocate resources to
life-history traits. One pervasive anthropogenic stressor, artificial
light at night (ALAN), extends into remote areas and masks the day:night
cycles to which animals are attuned. Here we ask how animals use this
environmental input to dictate their investment in survival and
reproductive traits and whether they must trade off investment in these
traits in female Gryllus veletis field crickets. Using the second
generation of field-collected individuals from a location absent from
ALAN, we reared females from the antepenultimate instar through adulthood
in either a control environment or one with ALAN. We then measured their
investment in survival through two aspects of immunity, encapsulation and
lysozyme activity, and their reproductive investment as the number of eggs
within a female. We found that ALAN reduced one aspect of immunity,
lysozyme activity, and reproductive investment. Further, there was a
negative trade-off in investment in encapsulation and reproduction, an
investment cost that was not present in females reared without ALAN. Our
results suggest a two-fold cost of ALAN on females: one on investment in
individual traits and another on a trade-off between them. These
maladaptive responses to ALAN could substantially impact natural
populations in the short term, and whether populations could respond in
the long term remains an open question.