Maternal care shapes an aposematic display and provides lifelong protection against predators
Data files
Sep 22, 2025 version files 168.48 KB
Sep 24, 2025 version files 87.51 KB
Abstract
Parental care can improve early offspring survival against predators by providing protection and resources. However, we have little knowledge of how its effects shape predator-prey interactions later in life. We investigated this with the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides, which provides care for offspring and carries warning colouration to advertise its chemical defences to predators. Warning displays by prey are selected by predators for uniformity and to reliably advertise the extent to which individuals are chemically defended. We investigated whether the strength of the correlation between the conspicuousness of the warning display and the potency of the chemical defences depends on levels of care received during development by manipulating the level of maternal care received by larvae and tracking the effects into adulthood. We found that individuals who received limited care developed into smaller adults with less conspicuous warning displays. The correlation between the visual display and the chemical defence was also weaker when broods received little care as larvae. We conclude that maternal care received by burying beetles modulates the information content of aposematic defence: less care makes signals less reliable. Our results further suggest that the prey’s social environment could constrain the response to selection from predators on warning signal reliability.
Dataset DOI: 10.5061/dryad.1jwstqk80
Description of the data and file structure
Files and variables
File: Data_Parental_care_and_deterrence_to_woodants.csv
Description: Behavioural data testing the deterrence of the chemical defence fluid of N. vespilloides beetles reared under different parental care treatments. The deterrence of fluid was tested against the wood ants.
Variables
- Nest = Ant nest ID
- Trial = Replicate number (3 replicates per ant nest)
- Treatment = Maternal care treatment (0, 8, 24, and 48 h)
- Sex = Sex of the burying beetle (1= female, 2 = male)
- Exudate = Total number of ants drinking the exudate solution droplet during the 5-minute trial
- Sugar = Total number of ants drinking on the sugar water droplet during the 5-minute trial
File: Parental_care_and_defence_in_burying_beetles_raw_data.csv
Description: Phenotypic data from a factorial rearing experiment where the time (h) that offspring received post-hatching maternal care was manipulated, and its effect on the size, warning coloration, and chemical defence of the offspring was measured.
Variables
- Family = FamilyID
- Collection = Generation (F30, F32 and F34).
- treatment = 0 hours, 8 hours, 24 hours, and control (48 hours)
- individual = individual ID number within a family
- sex = female or male
- firststripe_(mm2) = area of the first stripe (mm2) on the left side of the elytra (i.e., one measurement per individual)
- secondstripe_(mm2) = area of the second stripe (mm2) on the left side of the elytra (i.e., one measurement per individual)
- orange_total = area of first stripe + area of second stripe
- elytrasize_mm2 = area of the whole elytra (both wings, mm2).
- Lum_2stripe = luminance of the second stripe
- Saturation_2stripe = saturation of the second stripe
- Lum_black = luminance of the black pigmentation
- Saturation_black = saturation of the black pigmentation
- Lum_1stripe = luminance of the first stripe
- Saturation_1stripe = saturation of the first stripe
- Bodysize_mg = body mass in mg
- Eclosionfluid_quantity = mm in capillary tube (quantity of defensive fluid deployed)
- orange_prop = total area of orange /elytrasize
- firststripe_prop = firststripe area / elytrasize
- secondstrip_prop = secondstripe area / elytrasize
Code/software
The software version and loaded packages used to run files, as well as model structure and variables included in the analyses, are described in the submission (Methods, Statistical Analyses).
Version changes
24.9.2025 - Variables not used in the analyses presented in the article were removed from the Parental_care_and_defence_in_burying_beetles_raw_data.csv - file. Variable names (e.g., use of capitals) and their order were corrected in the README file to match the column names exactly.