Indirect fitness benefits can reinforce the direct fitness benefits of male mate choice

Mating preferences frequently evolve because they confer fitness benefits to the chooser. While there is strong evidence for both direct and indirect fitness benefits in the context of female mate choice, the potential for males to receive indirect benefits from mate choice remains understudied. Male mate choice for larger female body size is widespread among ectotherms and is generally attributed to the direct fitness benefits larger females provide due to their higher fecundity. However, when female size is heritable or condition-dependent, males could also receive indirect benefits from mating with larger females in the form of increased offspring fitness. We tested this possibility in Drosophila melanogaster by first confirming the direct fitness benefits associated with large females and then comparing the fitness of offspring produced by large versus small females. Although female body size did not influence offspring juvenile viability, large females produced daughters with highe..., , , # Data from: Indirect fitness benefits can reinforce the direct fitness benefits of male mate choice

## Description of the data and file structure

**MMCIND_Mom_Fec.csv**
Fecundity data for large and small females. Data are displayed in Figure 1.
“Block” = the experimental block
“MomSize” = the size of the female (L = large, S = small)
\"VialID\" = the replicate vial that the 10 females were sampled from for each block
\"Fecundity\" = the fecundity (number of eggs laid) for that female

**MMCIND_Juv.csv**
Juvenile viability data for offspring produced by large and small females. Data are displayed in Figure 2.
“Block” = the experimental block
\"Vial\" = the replicate vial for that block
\"OLRE\" = an observation-level random effect added to help with over dispersion
“FemSize” = the size of the female that produced the eggs (L = large, S = small)
\"TotalRed\" = the total number of wild-type offspring (i.e., produced by the large or small female) that survived to adulthood (out of 30 eggs)
\"TotalR...,