Data from: Prey with hidden colour defences benefit from their similarity to aposematic signals

Some camouflaged animals hide colour signals and display them only
transiently. These hidden colour signals are often conspicuous and are
used as a secondary defence to warn or startle predators (deimatic
displays) and/or to confuse them (flash displays). The hidden signals used
in these displays frequently resemble typical aposematic signals, so it is
possible that prey with hidden signals have evolved to employ colour
patterns of a form that predators have previously learned to associate
with unprofitability. Here, we tested this hypothesis by conducting two
experiments that examined the effect of predator avoidance learning on the
efficacy of deimatic and flash displays. We found that the survival
benefits of both deimatic and flash displays were substantially higher
against educated predators than naïve ones. These findings help explain
the phenological patterns we found in 1,568 macro-lepidopteran species on
three continents: species with hidden signals tend to occur later in the
season than species without hidden signals.