Male and Female Diving Beetle Adhesion Measurements for Sexual Conflict Study

Biomechanical data from an experiment on male clasping ability and female elytral morphology in two diving beetle species, Dytiscus lapponicus and Graphoderus zonatus. The dataset supports analysis of sexually antagonistic coevolution by comparing adhesive forces on rough versus smooth female morph surfaces. It was authored by Kristina Karlsson Green and published in 2020.

Use Cases

• Compare adhesive force measurements between rough and smooth female elytral morphs to test for sexually antagonistic adaptation.
• Analyze male adhesive capacity variation across different female surfaces to identify potential male performance trade-offs.
• Correlate morphological features of female elytra with male suction cup adhesion performance in Dytiscus lapponicus and Graphoderus zonatus.
• Model the relationship between elytral surface type and adhesive force to quantify the obstruction effectiveness of rough structures.

Strengths

• Data directly measures adhesive force, a key biomechanical metric for testing the sexual conflict hypothesis.
• Includes observations from two distinct diving beetle species, Dytiscus lapponicus and Graphoderus zonatus.
• Explicitly compares two female morphologies (rough and smooth elytra), enabling polymorphism analysis.
• Dataset is published under a permissive CC0 1.0 license, allowing unrestricted reuse.

Limitations

• The sample size (number of individual beetles or measurements) is not specified, limiting assessment of statistical power.
• Data is from a specific, controlled experiment and may not represent natural variation across populations or environments.
• No column structure or raw data format is provided, complicating direct machine-readability and analysis.

Provenance

Source

Dryad digital repository.

Collection Method

Biomechanical adhesion measurements from laboratory experiments on collected beetle specimens.

Freshness

Last updated in June 2020.