Data from: Heritability of male attractiveness persists despite evidence for unreliable sexual signals in Drosophila simulans

Sexual signals can be used to attract mates, but to be honest indicators of signaller quality they need to convey information reliably. However, environmental variation and genotype-by-environment (G x E) interactions have the potential to compromise the reliability of sexual signals. Here we test the reliability of cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) as signals of heritable aspects of male attractiveness in Drosophila simulans. We examined the heritability of male attractiveness and a measure of the difference between fathers and sons’ CHC profiles across dietary and temperature environments. Our results show that environmental heterogeneity disrupts the similarity of some components of father and son CHC profile. However, overall male attractiveness is heritable within and across environments, so that sire attractiveness is a good predictor of son attractiveness even with environmental heterogeneity. This suggests that although some male CHC signals are unreliable, attractive genotypes retain their attractiveness across environments on average.

性信号可用于吸引配偶，但要作为信号发送者个体质量的诚实指标，其必须能够可靠传递信息。然而，环境变异与基因型-环境互作（genotype-by-environment, G×E）有可能破坏性信号的可靠性。本研究以拟果蝇（Drosophila simulans）为对象，检验了表皮碳氢化合物（cuticular hydrocarbons, CHCs）作为雄性吸引力可遗传特征的信号的可靠性。我们测定了雄性吸引力的遗传力，以及不同膳食与温度环境下父本与子代雄蝇表皮碳氢化合物谱的差异度量指标。结果显示，环境异质性会破坏父本与子代雄蝇部分表皮碳氢化合物组分的相似性。不过，整体而言雄性吸引力在各环境内部及跨环境间均具有遗传力，即便存在环境异质性，父本的吸引力仍可较好预测子代雄蝇的吸引力。这表明，尽管部分雄性表皮碳氢化合物信号并不可靠，但平均而言，具有吸引力的基因型在不同环境中仍能维持其吸引力水平。