Adaptation for crypsis versus conspicuous social signalling following transitions across an extreme ecotone

A key selection pressure in most habitats is predation, and a common strategy adopted by prey is crypsis through background matching. Many marine blenny fishes are in the process of a dramatic transition across one of the world’s most extreme ecotones: the invasion of land across the intertidal zone. We investigated the impact of this transition on body crypsis versus the conspicuousness of visual signals across 56 blenny taxa relative to 59 biologically relevant backgrounds, and as viewed by conspecifics and four representative fish and avian predators. We computed 33 colour and 23 pattern indices from standardised digital photographs of six individuals for each taxa (median sample). Six of these indices were selected for detailed analysis following phylogenetic Principal Component Analysis. While phylogenetic regressions revealed some aspects of body crypsis appeared to have changed adaptively with the progressive transition to land (specifically a reduction in body colour saturation)..., See paper for full details on data collection and methodogy., , # Data from: Adaptation for crypsis versus conspicuous social signalling following transitions across an extreme ecotone

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.c59zw3rkh](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.c59zw3rkh)

## Description of the data and file structure

Data files are .csv and can be opened using any text, spreadsheet or statistical program.

Missing values are indicated by NA.

All data files have the following columns unless specified otherwise.

Data are averages computed across all available images for a taxon.

location

\- Geographic location where taxa were sampled; abbreviations on sites are given in Dryad Repository readme files associated with Ord & Cooke (2016; [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.67g0t](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.67g0t)) and Morgans & Ord (2014; [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.kp815](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.kp815)).

Background_ID

\- only in ‘background_dat’, this column specifies the image used to extract six representative regions for colour analysis; th...,