Fecundity

Individual female fecundity (long format). EggCount gives a single measurement of weekly fecundity, with measurement time given as time (weeks from eclosion), msmt.age (days from eclosion), age.std (days mean-centred and scaled). PostEclosion is the number of days after eclosion that an individual survived, and PE.std is this mean-centred and scaled

Individual treatment, morphology and lifespan

Data show individual ID, treatment groups and sex for each experimental subject surviving to eclosion. DevRate = (1/days from hatching to eclosion). Weight is measured in grams. Pronotum length is measured in millimetres. SMI is calculated separately for males and females. PostEclosion is the number of days an individual survived post-eclosion

Individual life history data

Data on individual morphology, energy storage, lifespan, treatment groups, etc. Also includes flags for energy storage where the measurements were outside the normal range. Scaled mass index (SMI) is given for eclosion (0), and end of weeks 1 and 2 post-eclosion

Individual calling data

Calling effort data: each row represents an observation for one night's calling (in seconds) for an individual male. Variables include individual ID, Group (males were sacrificed at different timepoints), Diet_cen (diet treatment, centred with single-unit deviations), Mating_num (female-access treatment, not centred, single-unit deviations), callDay (days post-eclosion for the recording), sumSecs (number of seconds the male spent calling), Lifespan, F_presence (whether a female was present or not), F_history (how many previous night's a male had had access to females)

Supplementary Table S1-2 from Intergroup aggression in meerkats

Violent conflicts between groups have been observed among many species of group living mammals and can have important fitness consequences, with individuals being injured or killed and with losing groups surrendering territory. Here, we explore between-group conflict among meerkats (Suricata suricatta), a highly social and cooperatively breeding mongoose. We show that interactions between meerkat groups are frequently aggressive and sometimes escalate to fighting and lethal violence and that these interactions have consequences for group territories, with losing groups moving to sleeping burrows closer to the centre of their territories following an intergroup interaction and with winning groups moving further away. We find that larger groups and groups with pups are significantly more likely to win contests, but that the location of the contest, adult sex ratio, and mean within-group genetic relatedness do not predict contest outcome. Our results suggest that intergroup competition may be a major selective force among meerkats, reinforcing the success of large groups and increasing the vulnerability of small groups to extinction. The presence of both within-group cooperation and between-group hostility in meerkats make them a valuable point of comparison in attempts to understand the ecological and evolutionary roots of human warfare

No evidence of a cleaning mutualism between burying beetles and their phoretic mite

Burying beetles (Nicrophorus vespilloides) breed on small vertebrate carcasses, which they shave and smear with antimicrobial exudates. Producing antimicrobials imposes a fitness cost on burying beetles, which rises with the potency of the antimicrobial defence. Burying beetles also carry phoretic mites (Poecilochirus carabi complex), which breed alongside them on the carcass. Here we test the novel hypothesis that P. carabi mites assist burying beetles in clearing the carcass of bacteria as a side-effect of grazing on the carrion. We manipulated the bacterial environment on carcasses and measured the effect on the beetle in the presence and absence of mites. With next-generation sequencing, we investigated how mites influence the bacterial communities on the carcass. We show that mites: 1)cause beetles to reduce the antibacterial activity of their exudates but 2) there are no consistent fitness benefits of breeding alongside mites. We also find that mites increase bacterial diversity and richness on the carcass, but do not reduce bacterial abundance. The current evidence does not support a cleaning mutualism between burying beetles and P. carabi mites, but more work is needed to understand the functional significance and fitness consequences for the beetle of mite-associated changes to the bacterial community on the carcass.</p

Viral lineages from more closely related host species are genetically more similar.

(A) The correlation between the genetic differentiation of viral lineages and the genetic distance between the species they have evolved in. Linear regression line is shown in red. Genetic distances were scaled so that the distance from the root to the tip of the tree was one. (B) Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) of FST between pairs of viral lineage and the genetic distance between the host species they evolved in. The observed value is in red and the grey bars are the null distribution obtained by permutation.</p

Viral lineages from the same host species were genetically more similar to each other than to lineages from different host species.

<p>The mean pairwise <i>F</i>_<i>ST</i> between all possible pairs of viral lineages from the same host species was calculated. The red line shows the observed value. The grey bars are the null distribution of this statistic obtained by permuting the viral lineages across host species 1000 times.</p

The frequency of SNPs in viral lineages that have evolved in different host species.

<p>Each row represents an independent viral lineage. Viruses that evolved in different host species are separated by black horizontal lines. Each column represents a polymorphic site in the DCV genome, and only sites where the derived allele frequency >0.05 in at least two lineages are shown. The intensity of shading represents the derived allele frequency. Sites where there are three alleles have the two derived allele frequencies pooled for illustrative purposes. Sites with SNP frequencies that are significantly correlated among lineages from the same host species are shown by red stars at the bottom the column (permutation test; <i>p</i><0.05). Open reading frames (ORFs) and viral proteins based on predicted polyprotein cleavage sites [<a href="http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.ppat.1006951#ppat.1006951.ref038" target="_blank">38</a>–<a href="http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.ppat.1006951#ppat.1006951.ref042" target="_blank">42</a>] are below the x axis. Information on the distribution of mutations across the genome and whether they are synonymous or non-synonymous can be found in the supplementary results. Sites with missing data are shown in white. The phylogeny was inferred under a relaxed molecular clock [<a href="http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.ppat.1006951#ppat.1006951.ref033" target="_blank">33</a>, <a href="http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.ppat.1006951#ppat.1006951.ref043" target="_blank">43</a>] and the scale axis represents the approximate age since divergence in millions of years (my) based on estimates from: [<a href="http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.ppat.1006951#ppat.1006951.ref035" target="_blank">35</a>, <a href="http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.ppat.1006951#ppat.1006951.ref036" target="_blank">36</a>].</p

Supplementary tables S1-6 from Vertically transmitted rhabdoviruses are found across three insect families and have dynamic interactions with their hosts

A small number of free-living viruses have been found to be obligately vertically transmitted, but it remains uncertain how widespread vertically transmitted viruses are and how quickly they can spread through host populations. Recent metagenomic studies have found several insects to be infected with sigma viruses (<i>Rhabdoviridae</i>). Here, we report that sigma viruses that infect Mediterranean fruit flies (<i>Ceratitis capitata</i>), <i>Drosophila immigrans</i>, and speckled wood butterflies (<i>Pararge aegeria</i>) are all vertically transmitted. We find patterns of vertical transmission that are consistent with those seen in <i>Drosophila</i> sigma viruses, with high rates of maternal transmission, and lower rates of paternal transmission. This mode of transmission allows them to spread rapidly in populations, and using viral sequence data we found the viruses in <i>D. immigrans</i> and <i>C. capitata</i> had both recently swept through host populations. The viruses were common in nature, with mean prevalences of 12% in <i>C. capitata</i>, 38% in <i>D. immigrans</i> and 74% in <i>P. aegeria</i>. We conclude that vertically transmitted rhabdoviruses may be widespread in a broad range of insect taxa, and that these viruses can have dynamic interactions with their hosts