Intraspecific variation in color and carotenoids across environmental extremes in an African Cichlid

Human activities frequently alter environmental conditions and affect the use of sexually selected traits like color in animals. However, the effects of environmental stressors are unlikely to be uniform across populations that experience different environments or between sexes. We aimed to understand the underlying genetic, environmental, and gene-by-environment contributions to color expression in males and females of a sexually dimorphic fish. Pseudocrenilabrus multicolor is a haplochromine cichlid found in environments that vary dramatically, particularly with respect to oxygen and turbidity levels. We reared fish from one swamp (hypoxic, clear) and one river (normoxic, turbid) population in a split-brood design (hypoxic/normoxic x clear/turbid) then quantified color and carotenoid concentrations. As expected in this sexually dimorphic species, females were far less colorful than males. In males, hypoxia and turbidity were drivers of traits associated with color, suggesting that co..., These data were collected using photographs and a spectrophotomer. Data were analyazed and processed in R., Data can be viewed using excel and analyzed in R., # Intraspecific Variation in Color and Carotenoids Across Environmental Extremes

This dataset includes color and carotenoid data of the cichlid *Pseudocrenilabrus multicolor* in response to rearing under hypoxic and turbid conditions. This dataset includes eight excel files and two R scripts, Spec_final.R and Carotenoids_rscript_final.R. Both scripts were analyzed using R version 4.3.0. Cells were left blank if a particular value could not be calculated for that individual.

Spec_final.R uses the input files: Rearing_Renamed.zip, Carotenoid_Fish_info.xlsx, Broodinfo.xlsx, and creates the file Rearingspecfullspectrum.xlsx, which is used in the next script.

Carotenoids_rscript_final.R uses the input files: Carotenoids_all.xlsx, Carotenoids_protein.xlsx, Broodinfo.xlsx, Carotenoids_Plasmavolume.xlsx, Rearingspecfullspectrum.xlsx, Carotenoid_Fish_info.xlsx, Rearing_Processing_Color.csv, Carotenoids_RearingInfo.xlsx

## Description of the data and file structure

#### Rearing\_Renamed.zip
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