Data from: Sexual selection on spontaneous mutations strengthens the between-sex genetic correlation for fitness

One hypothesised benefit to sexual selection is that it reduces mutation load. Here, we experimentally tested this idea, assaying male and female fitness in an experiment previously conducted on the fly, Drosophila serrata, where two panels of spontaneous accumulation lines were established from a common ancestor. In one panel, both natural and sexual selection were limited (LS), and in the other sexual selection was allowed to operate while natural selection was limited (SS). The effects of the sexual selection treatment were surprising. Although mutation accumulation reduced male and female fitness in both sets of lines, sexual selection had no detectable effect on the extent of fitness reduction or the amount of mutational variance for fitness in either sex. Sexual selection did however reshape the between-sex correlation for fitness, rM(m,f); significantly strengthening it. After 25 generations, rM(m,f) was positive but considerably less than one in the LS lines, suggesting although most mutations had sexually concordant fitness effects, sex-limited and/or sex-biased mutations also accumulated. In the SS lines rM(m,f) was strong and could not be distinguished from one. Simulations of the experimental setup revealed that this result may be due to sexual selection targeting relatively large effect mutations with male-limited fitness effects.