Data from: Female crickets assess relatedness during mate guarding and bias storage of sperm toward unrelated males

Recent evidence shows that females exert a post-copulatory fertilization
bias in favour of unrelated males to avoid the genetic incompatibilities
derived from inbreeding. One of the mechanisms suggested for fertilization
biases in insects is female control over transport of sperm to the
sperm-storage organs. We investigated post-copulatory inbreeding-avoidance
mechanisms in females of the cricket Teleogryllus oceanicus. We assessed
the relative contribution of related and unrelated males to the sperm
stores of double-mated females. To demonstrate unequivocally that biased
sperm storage results from female control rather than cryptic male choice,
we manipulated the relatedness of mated males and of males performing
post-copulatory mate guarding. Our results show that when guarded by a
related male, females store less sperm from their actual mate,
irrespective of the relatedness of the mating male. Our data support the
notion that inhibition of sperm storage by female crickets can act as a
form of cryptic female choice to avoid the severe negative effects of
inbreeding.