Field Data on Mating Pairs for Preference Estimation Methods

Dryad hosts data from a study proposing new estimators (Crough and Cscaled) for mating preference strength in wild populations. The research compares these methods against the traditional Pearson's correlation coefficient (r), analyzing their performance under the scale-of-choice effect. The dataset supports the evaluation of mating preference in species like Echinolittorina malaccana, Littorina fabalis, and Echinolittorina radiata.

Use Cases

• Compare the performance of the Crough and Cscaled estimators against the Pearson's r coefficient for measuring mating preference strength.
• Analyze the impact of the scale-of-choice effect (SCE) on correlation-based estimates of assortative mating.
• Apply the recommended Crough estimator combined with r to infer mating preference from empirical field data on mating pairs.
• Validate Gaussian-like preference function models using empirical data from wild-captured mating pairs.

Strengths

• Data is associated with a peer-reviewed methodological study proposing two novel estimators for a key evolutionary biology problem.
• Dataset is openly licensed under CC0-1.0, permitting unrestricted use and redistribution.
• Research includes analysis of multiple snail species (Echinolittorina malaccana, Littorina fabalis, Echinolittorina radiata) for comparative insights.

Limitations

• Specific data structure, sample size (rows), and available features (columns) are unknown from the provided metadata.
• The study notes the Cscaled estimator, while theoretically superior, failed at biological sample sizes, limiting its practical application.
• Temporal and precise geographic coverage of the field-collected mating pair data is not specified.

Provenance

Source

Dryad digital repository.

Collection Method

Empirical data collected from wild-captured mating pairs, as described in the associated research publication.

Freshness

Last updated in June 2020.