Fecundity in fossil Bryozoa: Accounting for colony fragmentation and the spatial division of reproductive labor

Our ability to measure evolution by natural selection in the fossil record is limited by the near impossibility of estimating the fecundity and thus relative fitness of most fossil organisms. Neocheilostome bryozoans are an important exception, because they have calcified larval brood chambers known as ovicells that provide an approximate estimate of the colony’s sexual fecundity. This clade has a rich fossil record dating back ~100 million years, providing potential opportunities to observe changes in relative fitness and natural selection through many past intervals of environmental change. However, neocheilostome fossil specimens are often highly fragmented, and fragments are not necessarily randomized subsets of a colony. To make use of the majority of the neocheilostome fossil record, we need to test the effect colony organization has on our methods of inferring colony fecundity from fragmented specimens.
In this study, we measure colony fecundity in a population of Recent neocheil..., , # Data from: Fecundity in fossil Bryozoa: Accounting for colony fragmentation and the spatial division of reproductive labor

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.r2280gbrj](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.r2280gbrj)

## Description of the data and file structure

In this study, we map the location of ovicells (larval brood chambers) across 27 bryozoan colonies in the species *Parasmittina eccentrica*. The dataset includes the 27 colony maps and the code for quantifying the arrangement of ovicells across a colony. The original specimens are from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (USNM PAL Collection # 787). The specimen images are available upon request from the corresponding author.

### Files and variables

#### File: alldata_submission.RData

**Description:** This.RData file will load everything necessary to run the R script (except packages) into your R Environment, so you can recreate all results and figures. There is no need to use the raw colony map files (ColonyMapFiles.zi...,