DOI: 10.5061/dryad.1jwstqk80
title: Maternal care shapes an aposematic display and provides lifelong protection against predators

description: Parental care can improve early offspring survival against predators by
 providing protection and resources. However, we have little knowledge of
 how its effects shape predator-prey interactions later in life. We
 investigated this with the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides, which
 provides care for offspring and carries warning colouration to advertise
 its chemical defences to predators. Warning displays by prey are selected
 by predators for uniformity and to reliably advertise the extent to which
 individuals are chemically defended. We investigated whether the strength
 of the correlation between the conspicuousness of the warning display and
 the potency of the chemical defences depends on levels of care received
 during development by manipulating the level of maternal care received by
 larvae and tracking the effects into adulthood. We found that individuals
 who received limited care developed into smaller adults with less
 conspicuous warning displays. The correlation between the visual display
 and the chemical defence was also weaker when broods received little care
 as larvae. We conclude that maternal care received by burying beetles
 modulates the information content of aposematic defence: less care makes
 signals less reliable. Our results further suggest that the prey’s social
 environment could constrain the response to selection from predators on
 warning signal reliability.
description: # Maternal care shapes an aposematic display and provides lifelong
 protection against predators Dataset DOI:
 [10.5061/dryad.1jwstqk80](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1jwstqk80) ##
 Description of the data and file structure ### Files and variables ####
 File: Data_Parental_care_and_deterrence_to_woodants.csv
 **Description:** Behavioural data testing the deterrence of the chemical
 defence fluid of *N. vespilloides* beetles reared under different parental
 care treatments. The deterrence of fluid was tested against the wood ants.
 ##### Variables * Nest = Ant nest ID * Trial = Replicate number (3
 replicates per ant nest) - Treatment = Maternal care treatment (0, 8, 24,
 and 48 h) * Sex = Sex of the burying beetle (1= female, 2 = male) *
 Exudate = Total number of ants drinking the exudate solution droplet
 during the 5-minute trial * Sugar = Total number of ants drinking on the
 sugar water droplet during the 5-minute trial #### File:
 Parental_care_and_defence_in_burying_beetles_raw_data.csv
 **Description:** Phenotypic data from a factorial rearing experiment where
 the time (h) that offspring received post-hatching maternal care was
 manipulated, and its effect on the size, warning coloration, and chemical
 defence of the offspring was measured. ##### Variables * Family = FamilyID
 * Collection = Generation (F30, F32 and F34). * treatment = 0 hours, 8
 hours, 24 hours, and control (48 hours) * individual = individual ID
 number within a family * sex = female or male * firststripe_(mm2) = area
 of the first stripe (mm^2^) on the left side of the elytra (i.e., one
 measurement per individual) * secondstripe_(mm2) = area of the second
 stripe (mm^2^) on the left side of the elytra (i.e., one measurement per
 individual) * orange_total = area of first stripe + area of second stripe
 * elytrasize_mm2 = area of the whole elytra (both wings, mm^2^). *
 Lum_2stripe = luminance of the second stripe * Saturation_2stripe =
 saturation of the second stripe * Lum_black = luminance of the black
 pigmentation * Saturation_black = saturation of the black pigmentation *
 Lum_1stripe = luminance of the first stripe * Saturation_1stripe =
 saturation of the first stripe * Bodysize_mg = body mass in mg *
 Eclosionfluid_quantity = mm in capillary tube (quantity of defensive fluid
 deployed) * orange_prop = total area of orange /elytrasize *
 firststripe_prop = firststripe area / elytrasize * secondstrip_prop =
 secondstripe area / elytrasize ## Code/software The software version and
 loaded packages used to run files, as well as model structure and
 variables included in the analyses, are described in the submission
 (Methods, Statistical Analyses). ## Version changes **24.9.2025** -
 Variables not used in the analyses presented in the article were removed
 from the Parental_care_and_defence_in_burying_beetles_raw_data.csv - file.
 Variable names (e.g., use of capitals) and their order were corrected in
 the README file to match the column names exactly.