DOI: 10.5061/dryad.80gb5mkzm
title: Data from: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Effects of paternal age at conception on fathers and sons

description: Advancing male age is often hypothesised to reduce both, male fertility
 and offspring quality due to reproductive senescence. However, the effects
 of advancing male age on reproductive output and offspring quality are not
 always deleterious. For example, older fathers might buffer effects of
 reproductive senescence by terminally investing in reproduction.
 Similarly, males that survive to reproduce at an old age, might carry
 alleles that confer high viability (viability selection) which are then
 inherited by offspring, or might have high reproductive potential
 (selective disappearance). Differentiating these mechanisms requires an
 integrated experimental study of paternal survival and reproductive
 performance, as well as offspring quality, which is currently lacking.
 Using a cross-sectional study in Drosophila melanogaster, we test the
 effects of paternal age at conception (PAC) on paternal survival and
 reproductive success, and on the lifespans of sons. We discover that
 mating at an old age is linked with decreased future male survival,
 suggesting that mating-induced mortality is possibly due to old fathers
 being frail. We find no evidence for terminal investment, and show that
 reproductive senescence in fathers does not onset until their late-adult
 life. Additionally, we find that as a father’s lifespan increases, his
 probability of siring offspring increases, for older PAC treatments only.
 Lastly, we show that sons born to older fathers live longer than those
 born to younger fathers, due to viability selection. Collectively, our
 results suggest that advancing paternal age is not necessarily associated
 with deleterious effects for offspring, and may even lead to older fathers
 producing longer-lived offspring.
description: # What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Effects of paternal age at
 conception on fathers and sons 1.      **Analysi**s: R code used for
 analysing data. 2.      **HTML_code**: HTML document for analysis file
 with all model outputs, after all analysis have been run. 3.     
 **F1_LS**: file with data for offspring survival. a.       Row: Row number
 b.      Paternal_ID: ID of fathers c.       Offspring_ID: ID of sons,
 which includes the ID of the father followed by the within-father ID of
 the son d.      Latency: Mating latency of father e.       Duration:
 Mating duration of father f.        Mating_age: age at which the father
 mated to conceive the sons g.      Paternal_LS: lifespan of the father
 h.      F1_count: number of offspring produced by the father at the age
 the son was conceived i.        F1_LS: lifespan of the son 4.     
 **F1counts and mortality**: data for paternal survival and reproduction
 a.       Row: Row number b.      ID: paternal ID c.       Latency: Mating
 latency of father d.      Duration: Mating duration of father e.      
 Mating_age: age at which the father mated to conceive the sons, as an
 ordinal variable f.        Mating_treatment: same as mating age, but as a
 categorical, nominal variable g.      Paternal_LS: lifespan of the father
 h.      Censor: “1” if paternal lifespan was measured. “0” if it was
 censored. i.        F1_count: number of offspring produced by the father
 at the “mating age” j.        Fertile: “1” if father produced an
 offspring, “0” if father did not produce any offspring k.     
 Terminal_lag_days: days elapsed between mating and death l.       
 Rep_analysis: whether or not to include in analysis of reproductive
 output. “0” given for unmated males. m.    Alive_3_days: probability of
 father surviving 3 days after mating where “1” is if father survived, “0”
 is if father died.