Data from: Poison frog colors are honest signals of toxicity, particularly for bird predators

Antipredator defenses and warning signals typically evolve in concert.
However, the extensive variation across taxa in both these components of
predator deterrence, and the relationship between them, are poorly
understood. Here we test whether there is a predictive relationship
between visual conspicuousness and toxicity levels across 10 populations
of the color polymorphic strawberry poison frog, Dendrobates pumilio.
Using a mouse-based toxicity assay, we find extreme variation in toxicity
between frog populations. This variation is significantly positively
correlated with frog coloration brightness, a viewer-independent measure
of visual conspicuousness (i.e. total reflectance flux). We also examine
conspicuousness from the view of three potential predator taxa, as well as
conspecific frogs, using taxon-specific visual detection models and three
natural background substrates. We find very strong positive relationships
between frog toxicity and conspicuousness for bird-specific perceptual
models. Weaker but still positive correlations are found for crab and D.
pumilio conspecific visual perception, while frog coloration as viewed by
snakes is not related to toxicity. These results suggest that poison frog
colors can be honest signals of prey unpalatability to predators, and that
birds in particular may exert selection on aposematic signal design.