Population differences in melanin pigmentation plasticity in response to a seasonal cue

Adaptive plasticity allows organisms to interact with heterogeneous environments and respond to environmental change. Population-level comparisons of plasticity provide insights into the selective factors driving plasticity evolution and the properties of reaction norms that are likely to evolve. We test how thermal environments shape melanin pigmentation plasticity in response to a seasonal cue in the white-lined sphinx moth, Hyles lineata. We compare how melanization is affected by photoperiod in two populations that experience different thermal environments: Colorado and Arizona. In a common garden experiment, we quantified two aspects of melanin pigmentation, melanic area and darkness, and measured their reaction norms in response to photoperiod. If thermal environment drives differences in melanin plasticity in response to photoperiod, then the reaction norms should differ in intercept (higher melanization in Colorado larvae across the range of photoperiods, due to colder temperatu..., , , # *Hyles* population comparison

Comparison of melanin pigmentation plasticity in two populations of *Hyles lineata* larvae from Arizona and Colorado. Below is a description of the data and software files. 

**Variable descriptions for \"pop_data.csv\":**

* Larval ID = unique individual identifier
* pop_origin = whether individual is descended from the AZ or CO wild-caught populations
* photoperiod = daylength treatment
* full_treatment = a concatenation of the population and photoperiod factors
* 5th_day = date that 5th instar was reached
* blocking_day = date that pupal stage was reached
* development_time = duration of 5th star (blocking_day - 5th_day), left blank if pupal stage was not reached (see notes column for more details)
* larval_mass = larval mass in grams, taken on same day as the photos
* pupal_mass = pupal mass in grams, left blank if pupal stage was not reached (see notes column for more details)
* sex = male or female if known, left blank if pupal stage was not reached ...,