DOI: 10.5061/dryad.qbzkh18t4
title: Data from: Animal personalities influence male mating behavior and reproductive fitness

description: The relationship between individual personality and sexual selection has
 the potential to provide insights into how variation in personality traits
 is maintained. However, whether and how individuals with different
 personality traits have different mating behaviors and the fitness
 consequences has remained largely unexplored. We tested the hypothesis
 that male individuals have different mating behavior depending on their
 personality traits, and that there are fitness effects of personality
 traits. To do so, we conducted trials to quantify personality traits and
 observed mating behavior under standardized conditions in the red flour
 beetle (Tribolium castaneum). We also collected the number of offspring
 produced by their female mates to assess the association between male
 personality and their reproductive fitness. We found that male beetles
 showed consistent inter-individual differences in walking distance,
 emergence time from shelter and death-feigning time, which likely
 corresponding to two personality traits of activity and boldness. Although
 larger males had higher mating success and produced more offspring, some
 personality traits were also strongly related to mating behavior and
 reproductive fitness. Males with longer walking distances tended to seek
 female mates more promptly. Other than the morphological trait of body
 size, the emergence time from shelter (boldness) also showed a positive
 relationship with the number of mating and offspring reproduced.
 Furthermore, we found that the interaction between death-feigning time and
 walking distance in males influenced the number of mating they obtain,
 with either shy but active or bold but inactive males achieving more
 matings. We therefore highlight that alongside morphological traits,
 certain personality traits can also play a role in affecting mating
 behaviors and even reproductive fitness in males.
description: For details on the methods see the Material and Methods section
 in the article.
description: # Data from: Animal personalities influence male mating behavior and
 reproductive fitness
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qbzkh18t4](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qbzkh18t4) ## Description of the data and file structure This dataset represents the results of repeated measurements of four personality traits (walking distance, emergence from shelter, death-feigning and patch discovery), three mating behaviors (the latency to first mating, number of mating, and mean duration of each mating) and two reproductive fitness (number of offspring and fertilized females) in male red flour beetles (*Tribolium castaneum*). ### Files and variables #### File: mating.xlsx **Description:** mating behaviors, reproductive fitness and different personality and morphological traits ##### Variables * ID: ID of a male beetle; block: time block; act (blup): walking distance calculated by the average BLUP; eme (blup): emergence time calculated by the average BLUP; death (blup): death-feigning time calculated by the average BLUP; nmating: number of matings; avgdur: average mating duration (s); latency: latency to first mating (s); nmf: number of fertilized female; nmoff: number of offspring produced; mass: body mass (g); leg: hind femur length (mm); plength: pronotum length (mm); pwidth: pronotum width (mm); elength: elytrum length (mm); ewidth: elytrum width (mm), PC1; rsleg: relative leg length. #### File: personality.xlsx **Description:** Repeated measurements of four personality traits, environmental temperature and morphological characteristics. ##### Variables * ID: ID of a male beetle; block: time block; activity: walking distance (cm); emergence: emergence time from shelter (s); patch: patch discovery time (s); Death-feigning: Death-feigning time (s); Tem_a, Tem_e, Tem_p, Tem_d: temperature during different personality tests, i.e., walking distance, emergence time from shelter,patch discovery time and death-feigning time (°C); PC1; rsleg: relative leg length.