Selection favors high spread and asymmetry of flower opening dates within plant individuals

Natural selection on traits expressed repeatedly by individuals is usually investigated with a focus on mean values, although within-individual trait distributions often differ also in other aspects, such as their spread and shape. In plants producing multiple flowers during a season, there might not be a single optimal flowering time, but rather an optimal distribution of flower opening dates. This optimal distribution might depend on both resource allocation patterns and interactions with the abiotic and biotic environment.
In this study, we quantified mean, variance, skewness and kurtosis of 495 individual flowering schedules (5287 flowers) over three years, and assessed phenotypic selection on these aspects of the within-individual distribution of opening dates in the perennial herb Lathyrus vernus. We also explored how selection on within-individual variation in flowering schedules was related to effects on two fitness components: fruit set and the proportion of seeds escaping pre-..., , , # Selection favors high spread and asymmetry of flower opening dates within plant individuals

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2jm63xsz1](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2jm63xsz1)

This data includes data on individuals (data_ids_clean.csv) and on individual flowers (data_id_flowers_clean.csv) coming from recordings of 5287 individual flowers of *Lathyrus vernus* belonging to 495 flowering events (i.e. one individual flowering in one year) over three years. It also includes weather data from a nearby meteorological station (weather_clean.csv). The code used in the manuscript is on the file 5_code_analyses_dryad.Rmd.

## Description of the data and file structure

The file data_ids_clean.csv contains the following columns:

* id: identifier of the plant individual
* fr_set: fruit set (proportion of flowers that developed to mature fruits)
* n_seed: total number of seeds
* fitness: total number of intact seeds
* prop_seed_preyed: proportion of preyed seeds
* year: the year of th...