Reduced palatability, fast flight, and tails: Decoding the defence arsenal of Eudaminae skipper butterflies in a Neotropical locality

Prey often rely on multiple defences against predators, such as flight speed, attack deflection from vital body parts, or unpleasant taste, but our understanding on how often and why they are co-exhibited remains limited. Eudaminae skipper butterflies use fast flight and mechanical defences (hindwing tails), but whether they use other defences like unpalatability (consumption deterrence), and how these defences interact, has not been assessed.
We tested the palatability of 12 abundant Eudaminae species in Peru, using training and feeding experiments with domestic chicks. Further, we approximated the difficulty of capture explained by flight speed and quantified by wing loading. We performed phylogenetic regressions to find any association between multiple defences, body size, and habitat preference.
We found a broad range of palatability in Eudaminae, within and among species. Contrary to current understanding, palatability was negatively correlated with wing loading, suggesting that fa..., , , # Data for: Reduced palatability, fast flight, and tails: Decoding the defence arsenal of Eudaminae skipper butterflies in a Neotropical locality

by

Daniel Linke, Jacqueline Hernandez Mejia, Valery N. P. Eche Navarro, Letty Salinas Sánchez, Pedro de Gusmão Ribeiro, Marianne Elias and Pável Matos-Maraví

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.37pvmcvtv](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.37pvmcvtv)

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Here is a short list of what each file contains and what the used abbreviations mean:

**COI_alignment.fasta**

COI sequences of the sequenced and identified experimental butterflies.

**final_database_forR.csv**

Basically the complete data without morphometric data of each individual.

Chick: Number of the experimental chick

provider: Vendor of this chick

race: Race of the chick (no effect on ratio was found)

colour: Colour of the pellet containing butterfly or mealworm tissue...