Diagnosing confounded Bateman gradients

The Bateman gradient is a fundamental metric of sexual selection, often interpreted as the fitness advantage individuals gain by increasing their number of mates. However, it is widely recognized that any traits influencing both mating success and reproductive success can confound the Bateman gradient, misrepresenting the strength of pre-copulatory sexual selection. Yet, the magnitude of this misrepresentation across different biological systems (e.g., differing in anisogamy or the strength of sperm competition), which covariates are most problematic, or how confounded relationships can be diagnosed to better interpret the Bateman gradient, remains largely unexplored. To address these gaps, we investigate nine plausible biological scenarios where the effect of male mating success on reproductive success is confounded. We find that covariances between male mating success and female fecundity or egg allocation confound the male Bateman gradient more strongly than covariances between male ..., , # Diagnosing confounded Bateman gradients

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.mcvdnckbc](10.5061/dryad.mcvdnckbc)

## Description of the data and file structure

This README.txt file was updated on 25/04/2025

Paper associated with this archive

Citation: Sanghvi et al, 2025. “Diagnosing confounded Bateman gradients”. Evolution.

Originators

Authors: Krish Sanghvi, Jonathan M. Henshaw, Alex Kacelnik, Tim Janicke, Irem Sepil

Access information

1\. Licenses/restrictions placed on the data or code: CC0 1.0 Universal

2\. Data derived from other sources: None

Data analysis and data files

Software: R v4.3.1

Packages: lme4, lmerTest, Rmisc, tidyr, dplyr, ggplot2, performance, glmmTMB, DHARMa, ggpubr, MASS, effsize, broom, purrr

FILES

Data and code file overview

This data repository consists of two code files and four data files.

Code file:

**1. BG sim.HTML**: R script HTML output that runs the entire simulation to generate data for the four biological systems and all scenarios therein.

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