Exploring polymorphism in a palatable prey: Predation risk and frequency-dependence in relation to distinct levels of conspicuousness

Camouflage and warning signals are different anti-predator strategies, which offer an excellent opportunity to study the evolutionary forces acting on prey appearance. Edible prey often escape detection via camouflage, which usually leads to apostatic selection favoring rare morphs. By contrast, defended prey often display conspicuous coloration acting as warning signals to predators, which usually leads to positive frequency-dependence and signal uniformity. However, when two morphs of the same species vary greatly in conspicuousness, the maintenance of both cryptic and conspicuous forms in profitable prey populations remains enigmatic. Using the white and melanic morphs of the invasive box tree moth (Cydalima perspectalis) presented at three different frequencies, we investigate a) the palatability of caterpillars and adult moths to birds, b) predation rates on the less conspicuous melanic morph, and c) the role of frequency-dependence in balancing morph frequencies. Our results show ..., , , # Exploring polymorphism in a palatable prey: Predation risk and frequency-dependence in relation to distinct levels of conspicuousness

This dataset contains raw data and code for analyses concerning the aforementioned article.

## Description of the data and file structure

### **Directory structure**

```
|− Detection.Rmd
|- Palatability.Rmd
|- Permutaion_analysis.Rmd
|- Spectra.Rmd
|- Vision_model.Rmd
|- data/
|- |- Bird_info.csv
|- |- detection.csv
|- |- palatability_adults_boxtreemoth.csv
|- |- palatability_clean.csv
|- |- palatability_caterpillars.csv
|- |- spectra/
|- |- |- box_tree/
|- |- |- |- (several files)
|- |- |- camouflage_net/
|- |- |- |- (several files)
|- |- |- moths/
|- |- |- |- (several files)
```

### **Description of each file**

#### **data/**

* **Bird_info.csv:** contains the individual information about birds, such as age, sex and ring number.
* IDBird: unique identification number given ...