Are weapon allometries steeper in major or minor males? A meta-analysis

Competition for mates can drive the evolution of exaggerated weaponry and male dimorphism associated with alternative reproductive tactics. In terrestrial arthropods, male dimorphism is often detected as non-linear allometries, where the scaling relationship between weapon size and body size differs in intercept and/or slope between morphs. Understanding the patterns of non-linear allometries is important as it can provide insights into threshold evolution and the strength of selection experienced by each morph. Numerous studies in male-dimorphic arthropods have reported that allometric slopes of weapons are shallower in large “major” males compared to small “minor” males. Because this pattern is common among beetles that undergo complete metamorphosis (holometabolous), researchers have hypothesized that the slope change reflects resource depletion during pupal development. However, no comprehensive survey has examined the generality of this trend. We systematically searched the literat..., , , # Are weapon allometries steeper in major or minor males? A meta-analysis

The dataset contains two Excel files and 2 R files. 

## Data Contents:

meta_data.csv is the complete dataset used in the meta-regression analyses

meta_code.R includes all R code used for the meta-regression analyses and production of figures

Compiling_data.xlsx reports the raw data extracted from each study used to calculate effect sizes (Hedges' g)

Calculating Hedges g.R reports the R code used for calculating effect sizes based on the compiled data

## Key to datasets:

### The meta\_data.csv file has the following columns:

**Citation:** Author and year of the study included in the meta-analysis

**Metamorphosis:** Categorial variable indicating the type of metamorphosis of the study organism (holometabolous = complete metamorphosis; hemimetabolous = incomplete or no metamorphosis)

**Order:** Taxonomic rank of the study organism

**Family:** Taxonomic rank of the study organism

**rotl_spp:** Species nam...