DOI: 10.5061/dryad.nk301fs
title: Data from: Lifelong foraging and individual specialisation are influenced by temporal changes of resource availability

description: Resource availability largely determines the distribution and behaviour of
 organisms. In plant‐pollinator communities, availability of floral
 resources may change so rapidly that pollinator individuals can benefit
 from switching between multiple resources, i.e. different flowering plant
 species. Insect pollinator individuals of a given generation often occur
 in different time windows during the reproductive season. This temporal
 variation in individual occurrences, together with the rapidly changing
 resource availability, may lead individuals of the same population to
 encounter and use different resources, resulting in an apparent individual
 specialisation. We hypothesized, that 1) individual pollinators change
 their resource use (flower visitation) during their lifetime according to
 the changing availability of floral resources, and that 2) temporal
 variation in individual occurrences of pollinators and in resource
 availability will partly explain individual specialisation. To test these
 hypotheses, we observed flower visitations of individually marked clouded
 apollo butterflies Parnassius mnemosyne during one reproductive season. We
 found temporal changes in lifetime individual resource use that followed
 the changes in resource availability, indicating that butterflies can
 adjust foraging to varying resource availability. Individuals differed
 considerably in their resource use. This variation was partly explained by
 temporal variation in both floral resource availability and temporal
 occurrence of individual butterflies. We suggest the butterfly as a
 sequential specialist, i.e. short‐term specialist and long‐term
 generalist. This foraging plasticity can be essential for short‐living
 insect pollinators in rapidly changing environments. Although flowering
 dynamics do not fully explain the variability in foraging, our results
 highlight the importance of temporal dimension in resource use studies.
 Ultimately, the relative pace of environmental change compared to
 individual lifespan may be a key factor in resource use plasticity.
description: Szigeti_et_al_R_scripts.zip: data sets, R scripts and figures.The archive Szigeti_et_al_R_scripts.zip includes the original data sets on Clouded Apollo butterflies' flower visitation and flower abundances of the 4 most visited flowering species, together with derived (e.g. aggregated) data sets, all R scripts and figures. R scripts: 1. Szigeti_et_al_001_Data_frames_and_descriptive_statistics.R transforms raw data into dataframes used in further analyses and includes descriptive statistics. 2. Szigeti_et_al_002_PSi_full_PSi_actual.R calculates population visit proportions and proportional diet similarity indices (PSi-s). 3. Szigeti_et_al_003_PSi_randomized_ttest.R runs a randomized paired t-test to compare PSi-actual and PSi-full. 4. Szigeti_et_al_004_Cluster_analysis.R carries out a cluster analysis to group individuals according to diet. 5. Szigeti_et_al_005_Figure_1.R creates Figure 1 and calculates descriptive statistics. 6. Szigeti_et_al_006_Figure_2.R analyses the relationship between diet overlap (PSi-j) and temporal distance between individual pairs and creates Figure 2. 7. Szigeti_et_al_007_Appendix_Fig1.R creates Figure 1 of the Appendix, presenting the additional 48 individuals being observed &lt;8 times visiting flowers.Szigeti_et_al_R_scripts.zip