Optimal polyandry in fruit flies

The study of polyandry has received increasing scientific attention with an emphasis on the fitness benefits and costs that females derive from mating with multiple males. There are still gaps in our understanding of how polyandry affects female fitness, however, as many previous studies compared the fitness outcomes of a single mating vs. two or three matings and did not separate the consequences of multiple mating from the costs of sexual harassment. We therefore conducted controlled mating trials with female fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) that could mate at either low (every eight days), medium (every four days), or high (every other day) rates while controlling for exposure to harassment from males. We found that female lifetime fitness was highest under the high followed by the medium mating-rate conditions. Moreover, we did not detect reductions in lifespan as a consequence of higher rates of polyandry. Our results demonstrate that even at realistically high rates, polyandr..., , , # Data from: Optimal polyandry in fruit flies

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.s4mw6m9gj](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.s4mw6m9gj)

## Description of the data and file structure

### Raw data and code used to produce figures and analyses for the manuscript: Optimal polyandry in fruit flies

All analyses for the main manuscript are in the \"main_fitness_analyses.R\" and analyses for the supplementary materials can be found in the \"supplementary_analyses.R\" file. The \"treatment\" column in all data files refers to whether data represents females in the low, medium, or high mating rate conditions. 

### Files and variables

For all files, empty cells in the \"notes\" column means there were no notes of special interest for that data point. 

#### File: glued\_pilot.csv

**Description:** data for pilot experiment of glued vs. unglued males

##### Variables

* day: day that we collected data (either 1 or 2)
* id: ID of female fly
* treatment: whether the female got glued or normal males
* obser...