Diet influences resource allocation in chemical defence in an aposematic moth

For animals that synthesise their chemical compounds de novo, resources, particularly proteins, can influence investment in chemical defences and nitrogen-based wing colouration such as melanin. Competing for the same resources often leads to trade-offs in resource allocation. We manipulated protein availability in the larval diet of the wood tiger moth, Arctia plantaginis, to test how early life resource availability influences relevant life history traits, melanin production, and chemical defences. We expected higher dietary protein to result in more effective chemical defences in adult moths and a higher amount of melanin in the wings. According to the resource allocation hypothesis, we also expected individuals with less melanin to have more resources to allocate to chemical defences. We found that protein-deprived moths had a slower larval development, and their chemical defences were less unpalatable for bird predators, but the expression of melanin in their wings did not differ f..., , , # Diet influences resource allocation in chemical defence but not melanin synthesis in an aposematic moth

Melanin_BirdResponse.txt and LifeHistoryMales.txt are the raw data in a format that can be opened in Wordpad or Excel.

The Melanin_BirdResponse.txt file includes raw data for the predators' response to the thoracic fluid of Estonian male wood tiger moths and the measurement of the melanin amount in the same moths, while the LifeHistoryMales.txt is the measure of life-history traits of those Estonian male wood tiger moths

The headers of columns for the Melanin_BirdResponse.txt are defined below:

* birdID: ID individual of each bird
* sex: sex of the bird
* age: indicate whether the bird was Juvenile/Adult
* treatment: diet treatment of the individual moth
* idmoth: ID of individual moth
* family: the family of the moth
* colour:indicates the melanisation of the moth's hindwing classified by eyes
* Trial: trial (1,2,3,4). trial 1 and 4 were water and 2 and 3 were w...