Maternal care shapes an aposematic display and provides lifelong protection against predators

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 vi..., , # Maternal care shapes an aposematic display and provides lifelong protection against predators

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.1jwstqk80](https://doi.org/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_dat...,