DOI: 10.5061/dryad.mcvdnck61
title: Data for: The suppression of a selfish genetic element increases a male's mating success in a fly

description: X chromosome meiotic drive (XCMD) kills Y-bearing sperm during
 spermatogenesis, leading to the biased transmission of the selfish X
 chromosome. Despite this strong transmission, some natural XCMD systems
 remain at low and stable frequencies, rather than rapidly spreading
 through populations. The reason may be that male carriers can have reduced
 fitness, as they lose half of their sperm, only produce daughters, and may
 carry deleterious alleles associated with XCMD. Thus, females may benefit
 from avoiding mating with male carriers, yielding a further reduction in
 fitness. Genetic suppressors of XCMD, which block the killing of Y sperm
 and restore fair Mendelian inheritance, are also common and could prevent
 the spread of XCMD. However, whether suppressed males are as fit as a
 wild-type male remains an open question, and the effect that genetic
 suppressors may have on a male’s mating success is rarely considered.
 Here, we investigate the mating ability of XCMD males and suppressed XCMD
 males in comparison to wild-type males in the fruit fly Drosophila
 subobscura, where drive remains at a stable frequency of 20% in wild
 populations where it occurs. We use both competitive and non-competitive
 mating trials to evaluate male mating success in this system. We found no
 evidence that unsuppressed XCMD males were discriminated against.
 Remarkably, however, their suppressed XCMD counterparts had a higher male
 mating success compared to wild-type controls. Unsuppressed XCMD males
 suffered 12% lower offspring production in comparison to wild-type males.
 This cost appears too weak to counter the transmission advantage of XCMD,
 and thus the factors preventing the spread of XCMD remain unclear.
description: This data was collected through running a series of competitive
 and non-competitive mate trials. See the README.md file
 for details of the data set.
description: # Data for: The suppression of a selfish genetic element increases a
 male's mating success in a fly We used single or competitive mate
 trials to determine the success of different male types. The males used
 either wildtype, carried meiotic drive, or a suppressed version of meiotic
 drive For the single male mate trials we measured copulation success,
 copulation latency, copulation duration and the number of offspring
 produced. For the competitive mate trial, two males were competed against
 each other to gain access to a single female. We competed every
 combination of male type and recorded which male won the mating We found
 that any male that carried the suppressor genes had an increased mating
 success. ## Description of the data and file structure ### Single male
 mate trial See file
 "LYTH\_single\_mate\_trial\_dryad\_data.xlsx" Each row
 corresponds to an individual male. SR = Males that carry a driving X
 chromosome ST = Standard males that do not carry a driving X chromosome
 Suppressed\_SR = SR males that are suppressed "SR\_or\_ST"
 refers to the male type; ST, SR or suppressed SR "Drive\_type"
 refers to the geographic origin of each isoline that was used. The first
 term before the "/" denotes where the driving X chromosome
 originated and the term after the "/" states where the autosomes
 are from. In cases where there are only one term - these were normal males
 that had a standard X chromosome originating from the same place as the
 autosomes. "Mating\_sucess" refers to whether a male gained a
 successful mating during the mate trial "Latency" refers to how
 long it took each male to gain a mating "Duration" refers to how
 long the mating lasted for "Offspring" refers to whether
 offspring was produced after the mating. This was recorded as binary data.
 "Total\_Offspring" refers to the number of offspring that each
 male produced Units: Latency and Duration were measured in seconds. In the
 mating success column: the presence of an NA means that male did not gain
 a sucessful mating during the 2 hours of the mating trial. ### Competitive
 mate trial See file
 "LYTH\_competitive\_mate\_trial\_dryad\_data.xlsx" Each row
 corresponds to an individual male. SR = Males that carry a driving X
 chromosome ST\_susceptible = standard (wildtype) males that have genes
 susceptible to a driving X chromosome ST\_suppressing = standard
 (wildtype) males that have the suppressing genes Suppressed\_SR = SR males
 that are suppressed "Cross" refers to the male types of the
 competitive pair "Male\_id" refers to individual male types
 "Mated\_or\_unmated" refers to whether the male won the mating
 (recorded as mated) or lost the mating (recorded as unmated).