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Data from: Development time mediates the effect of larval diet on ageing and mating success of male antler flies in the wild
Angell, Christopher; Oudin, Mathieu; Rode, Nicolas; Mautz, Brian; Bonduriansky, Russell; Rundle, Howard — 2020-11-05 <p class="western" lang="en-US">High-quality developmental environments often improve individual performance into adulthood, but allocating toward early life traits, such as growth, development rate and reproduction, may lead to trade-offs with late-life performance. It is, therefore, uncertain how a rich developmental environment will affect the ageing process (senescence), particularly in wild insects. To investigate the effects of early life environmental quality on insect life-history traits, including senescence, we reared larval antler flies (<i>Protopiophila litigata</i>) on four diets of varying nutrient concentration, then recorded survival and mating success of adult males released in the wild. Declining diet quality was associated with slower development, but had no effect on other life-history traits once development time was accounted for. Fast-developing males were larger and lived longer, but experienced more rapid senescence in survival and lower average mating rate compared to slow developers. Ultimately, larval diet, development time and body size did not predict lifetime mating success. Thus, a rich environment led to a mixture of apparent benefits and costs, mediated by development time. Our results indicate that ‘silver spoon' effects can be complex and that development time mediates the response of adult life-history traits to early life environmental quality.</p>
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Territoriality in Drosophila: indirect effects and covariance with body mass and metabolic rate
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Tremblay, Matteo; Rundle, Howard; Videlier, Mathieu; Careau, Vincent — 2021-02-19 <p>Territoriality (i.e., defence of a resource) is the outcome of behavioural interactions that can result in selective advantages in many vertebrates and invertebrates. Since territoriality is expressed in a social context, an individuals’ territoriality may change according to the phenotype of the opponents that they are confronted with (termed “indirect effects”). Defending a territory may also confer energetic costs to individuals, which could be reflected in their standard metabolic rate (SMR), a key component of an ectotherms’ energy budget. Here, we measured territoriality using dyadic contests, body mass, and SMR using flow-through respirometry, twice in each of 192 adult male Drosophila melanogaster. Territoriality, body mass, and (whole-animal) SMR were all significantly repeatable. However, essentially all the among-individual variation in SMR was shared with body mass, as indicated by a very strong among-individual correlation (<em>r</em><sub>ind</sub>) between body mass and SMR. The among-individual correlation between territoriality and SMR also tended to be positive, suggesting the presence of underlying metabolic costs to territoriality. Although indirect effects on territoriality were present but weak (accounting for 8.4% of phenotypic variance), indirect effects on territoriality were negatively and significantly correlated with body mass. This indicates that larger individuals tended to suppress their opponents territoriality. Variation among individuals in their ability to suppress territoriality in others was not associated with their own territoriality or SMR.</p>
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Data from: Epicuticular compounds of Protopiophila litigata (Diptera: Piophilidae): identification and sexual selection across two years in the wild
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Angell, Christopher; Curtis, Sharon; Ryckenbusch, Anaïs; Rundle, Howard — 2019-11-30 <p>The epicuticular compounds (ECs) of insects serve both to waterproof the cuticle and, in many taxa, as pheromones that are important for various social interactions including mate choice within populations. However, ECs have not been individually identified in many species and most studies of their role in mate choice have been performed in a laboratory setting. Here we newly identify and quantify the ECs of the antler fly, <em>Protopiophila litigata</em> Bonduriansky, and use a cross-sectional selection analysis to quantify their association with male mating success in the wild across two years (2013 and 2017). The ECs of antler flies include straight-chain and methylated alkanes, alkenes, and a family of branched wax esters. We find all ECs to be shared between males and females but also demonstrate sexual dimorphism in the abundance of several. Male EC relative abundances were significantly associated with mating success in both years, although the multivariate direction of selection differed significantly between the years. Surprisingly, only two of the 18 compounds (or groups of compounds) we identified were similarly associated with mating success across the sampling years. In 2017, we further partitioned sexual selection into intra- and intersexual components, revealing selection on ECs to be significant via female choice but not male-male competition. Our study is one of few to investigate the potential role of ECs in mating success in the wild and adds to a growing body of evidence demonstrating significant temporal variability in selection in natural populations.</p>
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Maternal and paternal age effects on male antler flies: a field experiment
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Angell, Christopher; Janacek, Rebecca; Rundle, Howard — 2021-11-28 <p><span style="background:transparent none 0% 0%;">In many species, parental age at reproduction can influence offspring performance and lifespan, but the direction of these effects and the traits affected vary among studies. Data on parental age effects are still scarce in <font>non-captive</font> populations, especially insects, despite species such as fruit flies being models in laboratory-based aging research. We performed a biologically relevant experimental manipulation of maternal and paternal age at reproduction of antler flies (<i>Protopiophila litigata</i>) in the laboratory and tracked the adult lifespan and reproductive success of their male offspring released in the wild. Increased paternal, but not maternal, age somewhat increased sons’ adult lifespan, while parental ages did not influence sons’ mating rate or reproductive senescence. Our results indicate that while parental age effects do exist in an insect in the field, they may be beneficial in such a short-lived animal, in contrast to results from most wild vertebrates and laboratory invertebrates.</span></p>
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Data from: The purging of deleterious mutations in simple and complex mating environments
Colpitts, Julie; Williscroft, Darla; Sekhon, Harmandeep; Rundle, Howard; Rundle, Howard D.; Sekhon, Harmandeep Singh — 2017-09-22 There is a general expectation that sexual selection should align with natural selection to aid the purging of deleterious mutations, yet experiments comparing purging under monogamy vs. polygamy have provided mixed results. Recent studies suggest that this may be because the simplified mating environments used in these studies reduces the benefit of sexual selection through males and hampers natural selection through females by increasing costs associated with sexual conflict. To test the effect of the physical mating environment on purging, we use experimental evolution in Drosophila melanogaster to track the frequency of four separate deleterious mutations in replicate populations that experience polygamy under either a simple or structurally complex mating arena while controlling for arena size. Consistent with past results suggesting a greater net benefit of polygamy in a complex environment, two of the mutations were purged significantly faster in this environment. The other two mutations showed no significant difference between environments.

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(Author: Rundle, Howard)

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