DOI: 10.5061/dryad.4f4qrfjqr
title: Data from: Every hue has its fan club: Diverse patterns of color-dependent flower visitation across Lepidoptera

description: This dataset contains RGB color measurements and family-level plant
 identifications for flowers visited by adult Lepidoptera in the
 Southwestern Ozarks, USA. Observations were manually curated from
 iNaturalist and span diurnal and crepuscular flower visits between 2002
 and 2024. The dataset includes: flower color data from Lepidoptera
 visitation records, a control sample of commonly photographed flowers
 matched for seasonal availability, and a subset of records for evaluating
 the randomness of flower choices. Flower colors were measured digitally
 using standardized RGB sampling procedures to assess color preferences
 across Lepidoptera species.
description: All data used in this study were sourced from https://www.inaturalist.org/ by doing a search on the website constrained to the order Lepidoptera and the following 14 counties: Benton, Carroll, and Washington in Arkansas; Adair, Cherokee, Delaware, and Ottawa in Oklahoma; Cherokee in Kansas; and Barry, Jasper, Lawrence, McDonald, Newton, and Stone in Missouri: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=2601,2595,2162,1779,710,1187,256,389,2900,2939,2753,2940,229,576&subview=map&taxon_id=47157. We manually filtered the photographs of adult butterflies and moths to those visiting flowers during daylight and twilight hours and recorded the calendar date of each such observation. The final dataset was compiled on December 31, 2024, and included all relevant observations uploaded to iNaturalist by that date. We also identified, to the family level, the flowering plants on which Lepidoptera were photographed. In total, our dataset comprised diurnal flower visitation entries spanning a period from April 20, 2002 to December 21, 2024. Additionally, we created a control flower color dataset by measuring the colors of 700 individual flowers from our study area. The purpose of this control dataset was to test whether individual Lepidoptera species showed non-random flower color preferences or simply visited flowers at random, relative to what was seasonally available in the environment. To construct this additional dataset, we first generated a distribution of 700 calendar dates that closely mirrored the seasonal distribution of Lepidoptera observations in our primary dataset; the total sample size of 700 was chosen because it exceeded the number of observations for the most observed species, the monarch <em>Danaus plexippus</em> (N = 618). Both insects and plants exhibit strong seasonal patterns, and we aimed to control for phenological overlap by matching the timing of plant and Lepidoptera records as closely as possible. For each calendar date, we searched iNaturalist for angiosperm records from the study area, selected one to three most recently uploaded photographs (depending on how many were needed, based on the generated distribution) that clearly depicted flowers, and measured flower color from these images as described below. We did not control for plant taxonomic identity – instead, we intended to sample the most frequently photographed flowers. For each Lepidoptera species with &gt;50 observations in the primary dataset, we drew a subset of expected visited flowers from the additional control dataset that matched not only the sample size but also the day-to-day seasonal distribution of the corresponding Lepidoptera observations. We acknowledge that drawing multiple random subsets, not just one, and from a larger control pool, would be a more rigorous approach for estimating expected distributions. However, this was not feasible in our case due to a necessary tradeoff between randomness and seasonal matching. Generating multiple seasonally constrained random subsets of sufficient sample size would have required orders of magnitude more manual color measurements. We therefore chose a single expected subset of flowers per species. For our analyses of Lepidoptera flower color preference, we took into account all flowering plants except grasses (Poaceae). Flower colors were measured on a MacBook Pro 2019 (macOS Sonoma v. 14.5) with the display color profile set to sRGB IEC61966-2.1. We used the Digital Color Meter application v. 5.22 with the aperture size of 11 x 11 pixels and the color space set to ‘Display native values.’ To expedite the measurements, we did not download the original photos from iNaturalist and instead viewed them in the Google Chrome browser v. 125.0.6422.78 whose color profile was also set to sRGB. Before measuring the flower colors, we compared the red, green and blue readings from the Digital Color Meter by sampling known CSS web colors and confirmed that this software displayed the red, green, and blue (RGB) values from web pages correctly. We then picked an area of each image that was as representative of the overall flower color as possible, which could include not only the petals, but also the calyx, stamens and pistils, bracts, and other parts that contributed to the general appearance of the flower or inflorescence. Sometimes this procedure would require zooming the image in or out. If the flower was obscured by deep shade or by the body and wings of the butterfly or moth, we measured the average color of a well-lit neighboring flower of the same species in the same image. We did not make any adjustments to white balance, exposure, etc., and treated our photographic data as inherently noisy, but we did assume that the nature and amount of statistical noise would be constant across all families and species. Thus, we had three values (red, green, and blue), which were calculated as means across a representative area of 11 x 11 pixels, for one flower per observation. Sometimes one iNaturalist observation contained images of the same individual sitting on flowers of different color, and these were treated as separate observations.
description: # Data from: Every hue has its fan club: Diverse patterns of
 color-dependent flower visitation across Lepidoptera Dataset DOI:
 [10.5061/dryad.4f4qrfjqr](10.5061/dryad.4f4qrfjqr) ## Description of the
 data and file structure This README.txt file was generated on 8 May 2025
 by Dmitry Kutcherov GENERAL INFORMATION 1\. Title of Dataset: Data from:
 'Every hue has its fan club: Diverse patterns of color-dependent
 flower visitation across Lepidoptera' 2\. Author Information: ```
 Corresponding Investigator Name: Dr Dmitry Kutcherov Institution:
 University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA Institution email:
 kucherov@uark.edu Personal email: dmitry.kutcherov@gmail.com
 Co-investigator Name: Dr Erica L Westerman Institution: University of
 Arkansas Email: ewesterm@uark.edu ``` 3\. Date of data collection: 31 Dec
 2024 4\. Geographic location of data collection: southwestern Ozark
 Highlands in the central United States of America, including the following
 counties: Benton, Carroll, and Washington in Arkansas; Adair, Cherokee,
 Delaware, and Ottawa in Oklahoma; Cherokee in Kansas; and Barry, Jasper,
 Lawrence, McDonald, Newton, and Stone in Missouri, which together occupy
 23,814 km2. 5\. Funding sources that supported the collection of the data:
 ``` National Science Foundation (grant IOS-2238931 to ELW) ``` 6\.
 Recommended citation for this dataset: Kutcherov, Dmitry and Westerman,
 Erica L (2025), Data from: 'Every hue has its fan club: Diverse
 patterns of color-dependent flower visitation across Lepidoptera',
 Dryad, Dataset DATA & FILE OVERVIEW This dataset contains information
 on the RGB color and family-level taxonomic identity of
 Lepidoptera-visited flowers in the Southwestern Ozarks (USA). Simply put,
 file 1 is a dataset of color-dependent flower visitation by Lepidoptera;
 file 3 is a sample of the most photographed flowers; file 2 contains
 subsamples from 1 and 3 to test for randomness of flower choices. ###
 Files and variables FILE LIST ``` File 1 Name:
 iNaturalist_Butterfly-Visited_Flower_Colors_Southwestern_Ozarks.csv File 1
 Description: Comma-delimited dataset containing 8,032 entries of
 Lepidoptera visiting flowers and RGB color of those flowers. File 2 Name:
 iNaturalist_Flower_Colors_Control_Southwestern_Ozarks.csv File 2
 Description: Comma-delimited dataset of observed vs. expected flower
 visitation by 32 selected Lepidoptera species. File 3 Name:
 iNaturalist_Flower_Colors_Southwestern_Ozarks.csv File 3 Description:
 Comma-delimited dataset containing 700 pseudorandom entries of flowers and
 RGB color of those flowers. ``` \ DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR:
 iNaturalist_Butterfly-Visited_Flower_Colors_Southwestern_Ozarks.csv 1\.
 Number of variables: 14 2\. Number of rows: 8033 total, first row is
 headings 3\. Variable list: ``` Group: butterflies (Papilionoidea) or
 moths (rest of Lepidoptera) Family: taxonomic family Species: species ID:
 iNaturalist observation ID Date: calendar date (DD-Mon-YY) Red: red
 channel in the RGB color space Green: green channel in the RGB color space
 Blue: blue channel in the RGB color space Month: month number (1 is
 January, 12 is December) Cluster: flower color group (Violet, Lavender,
 Magenta, Blush, Crimson, Red, Orange, Yellow, Beige or White)
 Plant_Family: family to which the visited flower with measured color
 belongs ``` 4\. Missing data codes: ``` Family: Unknown (when family-level
 ID was problematic) Species: Genus sp. (e.g., Hemaris sp., when
 species-level ID was problematic, or Genus sp., when even genus-level ID
 was difficult) Plant_Family: Unknown (when family-level ID was
 problematic; this category also includes a few cases when observations
 were deleted after we took color measurements but before we did plant
 family IDs; it also includes a few cases when objects in the photo turned
 out to be not real flowers upon reexamination) ``` 5\. Abbreviations used:
 ``` N/A; not applicable ``` 6\. Other relevant information: ``` N/A; not
 applicable ``` DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR:
 iNaturalist_Flower_Colors_Control_Southwestern_Ozarks.csv 1\. Number of
 variables: 8 2\. Number of rows: 12990 total, first row is headings 3\.
 Variable list: ``` Species: species Distribution: Observed (copied from
 iNaturalist_Butterfly-Visited_Flower_Colors_Southwestern_Ozarks.csv) or
 expected (a seasonally-controlled pseudorandom subsample from
 iNaturalist_Flower_Colors_Southwestern_Ozarks.csv) Date: calendar date
 (DD-Mon-YY) Red: red channel in the RGB color space Green: green channel
 in the RGB color space Blue: blue channel in the RGB color space Month:
 month number (1 is January, 12 is December) Cluster: flower color group
 (Violet, Lavender, Magenta, Blush, Crimson, Red, Orange, Yellow, Beige or
 White) ``` 4\. Missing data codes: ``` N/A; not applicable ``` 5\.
 Abbreviations used: ``` N/A; not applicable ``` 6\. Other relevant
 information: ``` N/A; not applicable ``` DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR:
 iNaturalist_Flower_Colors_Southwestern_Ozarks.csv 1\. Number of variables:
 8 2\. Number of rows: 701 total, first row is headings 3\. Variable list:
 ``` ID: iNaturalist observation ID Date: calendar date (DD-Mon-YY) Red:
 red channel in the RGB color space Green: green channel in the RGB color
 space Blue: blue channel in the RGB color space Month: month number (1 is
 January, 12 is December) Cluster: flower color group (Violet, Lavender,
 Magenta, Blush, Crimson, Red, Orange, Yellow, Beige or White)
 Plant_Family: plant family to which the flower with measured color belongs
 ``` 4\. Missing data codes: ``` Plant_Family: Unknown ``` 5\.
 Abbreviations used: ``` N/A; not applicable ``` 6\. Other relevant
 information: ``` N/A; not applicable ``` ## Access information Data was
 derived from the following source:
 [https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=2601,2595,2162,1779,710,1187,256,389,2900,2939,2753,2940,229,576&subview=map&taxon_id=47157](https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=2601,2595,2162,1779,710,1187,256,389,2900,2939,2753,2940,229,576&subview=map&taxon_id=47157)