Data from: Male responses to sperm competition risk when rivals vary in their number and familiarity

Males of many species adjust their reproductive investment to the number of rivals present simultaneously. However, few studies have investigated whether males sum previous encounters with rivals, and the total level of competition has never been explicitly separated from social familiarity. Social familiarity can be an important component of kin recognition and has been suggested as a cue that males use to avoid harming females when competing with relatives. Previous work has succeeded in independently manipulating social familiarity and relatedness among rivals, but experimental manipulations of familiarity are confounded with manipulations of the total number of rivals that males encounter. Using the seed beetle Callosobruchus maculatus we manipulated three factors: familiarity among rival males, the number of rivals encountered simultaneously, and the total number of rivals encountered over a 48-hour period. Males produced smaller ejaculates when exposed to more rivals in total, regardless of the maximum number of rivals they encountered simultaneously. Males did not respond to familiarity. Our results demonstrate that males of this species can sum the number of rivals encountered over separate days, and therefore the confounding of familiarity with the total level of competition in previous studies should not be ignored.,Lymbery et al 2018 Full datasetContains all the data used in the statistical analyses for the associated manuscript. The file contains two spreadsheets: one containing the data and one containing a legend relating to column titles.Lymbery et al Full Dataset.xlsxLymbery et al 2018 Reduced dataset 1Contains data used in the attached manuscript following the removal of three outliers for the purposes of data distribution, as described in the associated R code. The file contains two spreadsheets: one containing the data and one containing a legend relating to column titles.Lymbery et al Reduced Dataset After 1st Round of Outlier Removal.xlsxLymbery et al 2018 Reduced dataset 2Contains the data used in the statistical analyses for the associated manuscript, after the removal of all outliers stated in the manuscript and associated R code. The file contains two spreadsheets: one containing the data and one containing a legend relating to column titles.Lymbery et al Reduced Dataset After Final Outlier Removal.xlsxLymbery et al 2018 R ScriptContains all the R code used for statistical analysis in this manuscript, with annotations to aid interpretation.,