Early-life food stress hits females harder than males in insects: a meta-analysis of sex differences in environmental sensitivity

Fitness consequences of early-life environmental conditions are often sex-specific, but corresponding evidence for invertebrates remains inconclusive. Here we use meta-analysis to evaluate sex-specific sensitivity to early-life nutritional conditions in insects. Using literature-derived data for 85 species with broad phylogenetic and ecological coverage, we show that females are generally more sensitive to food stress than males. Stressful nutritional conditions during development typically lead to female-biased mortality and thus increasingly male-biased sex ratios of emerging adults. We further demonstrate that the general trend of higher sensitivity to food stress in females can primarily be attributed to their typically larger body size in insects and hence higher energy needs during development. By contrast, there is no consistent evidence of sex-biased sensitivity in sexually size-monomorphic species. Drawing conclusions regarding sex-biased sensitivity in species with male-biased..., Data collection
These data were collected for a meta-analysis to assess sex-specific sensitivity to early-life nutritional conditions in insects. We made use of experimental case studies reporting sex ratios at adult emergence in conspecifics reared under two or more diet treatments (food quality or availability). We collated primary studies in two complementary ways. The majority of primary data sets for this synthesis were collected systematically by the lead author (T. Teder) from an extensive list of journals in the field of entomology, ecology and evolutionary biology, partly as a result of one-time retrospective screening (articles published before 2003) and partly as a result of continuous screening (articles published between 2004 and 2021) of journals' tables of contents. Our systematic screening meant that the journals' tables of contents were routinely examined, and all papers identified as potentially containing relevant data on the basis of article titles were subjected to ..., Data are provided as .xlsx files, and R scripts are provided for analyses. We encourage researchers interested in the re-use of this data set and code to contact the authors of the data set.