Visual Environment Shapes the Social Dynamics of Coloration and Competition in African Cichlids

This dataset accompanies the manuscript “Visual Environment Shapes the Social Dynamics of Coloration and Competition in an African Cichlid Fish” (accepted in the Journal of Experimental Biology). It contains the raw and processed data underlying all analyses and figures presented in the study, including: Behavioral scoring logs of male Astatotilapia burtoni across different visual environments. Morph frequency data documenting the emergence of yellow and blue males under distinct substrate conditions. Dyadic competition outcomes and associated behavioral ethograms. Code and scripts for data processing and figure generation (also mirrored in the accompanying GitHub repository). These data provide a transparent record of how environmental color cues shape the emergence of morphology, behavior, and competitive outcomes in A. burtoni. They are shared to ensure reproducibility, support secondary analyses, and facilitate comparative research on phenotypic plasticity and color polymorphisms across taxa.