Adaptive significance of long mating with repeated intromissions in Zygogramma bicolorata

Long matings are abundant in insects despite the range of the costs involved. The causes and consequences of the evolution of long mating remain an interesting problem for behavioural ecologists. We studied extraordinarily long mating that involves repeated intromissions interspersed with latent periods in the Parthenium beetle (Zygogramma bicolorata). We conducted a series of interrupted mating assays to examine the fitness consequences of different components of this curious mating behaviour. We tested multiple adaptive hypotheses concerning male fertility and competitive ability. We found that sperm transfer and fertility did not exhibit a linear increase with the number of intromissions. There was also no evidence of nutrient transfer by the males. Interestingly, our results showed that both sexes suffered a significant cost of long mating. Further, female remating behaviour was found to be modulated by the length of previous mating. Additionally, males were observed performing a cu..., The beetles were brought to the laboratory to setup a breeding population. Once established, the experiments were conducted by setting up mating trials. Most of the experiments were conducted in the laboratory. A few experiments, especially for mating behaviour characterization, were done outside the laboratory - under semi-natural setup. , , # Adaptive significance of long mating with repeated intromissions in Zygogramma bicolorata

**Key to reading the data file:**

Data used in the manuscript titled

\"Adaptive significance of long mating with repeated intromissions in Zygogramma bicolorata\" can be found in the spreadsheet file named 'Data file\".

Data of different traits have been separated in different tabs.

Sperm transfer, Fecundity and Hatchability data are from Experiment 1.

Remating and Effect of time of the day data are from Experiment 2.

Starvation survival and Egg size data are from Experiment 3.

Leg rubbing data is from Experiment 4.

Data are arranged vertically, with parameters measured/factors separated in columns.

Abbreviations used in the spreadsheet and remarks:

**Sperm transfer (sheet: sperm_count)**

id: Female identity

trt: Treatments

total_sperm: Total number of sperm estimated from spermatheca, bursa copulatrix and oviduct

**Fecundity (sheet: fecundity)**

id: Female identity

trt: Treatments
...