Appearance before performance? Nutritional constraints on life-history traits, but not warning signal expression in aposematic moths.

ABSTRACT: Trade-offs have been shown to play an important role in the divergence of mating strategies and sexual ornamentation, but their importance in explaining warning signal diversity has received less attention. In aposematic organisms, allocation costs of producing the conspicuous warning signal pigmentation under nutritional stress could potentially trade-off with life-history traits and maintain variation in warning coloration. We studied this with an aposematic herbivore Arctia plantaginis (Arctiidae), whose larvae and adults show extensive variation in aposematic coloration. In larvae, less melanic coloration (i.e. larger orange patterns) produces a more efficient warning signal against predators, whereas high amounts of melanism (smaller orange pattern) enhance thermoregulation, correlate

SUBMITTER: Lindstedt C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7027542 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature