Turbidity drives plasticity in the eyes and brains of an African cichlid

Natural variation in environmental turbidity correlates with variation in the visual sensory system of many fishes, suggesting that turbidity may act as a strong selective agent on visual systems. Since many aquatic systems experience increased turbidity due to anthropogenic perturbations, it is important to understand the degree to which fish can respond to rapid shifts in their visual environment, and whether such responses can occur within the lifetime of an individual. We examined if developmental exposure to turbidity (Clear <5 NTU, Turbid ~9 NTU) influenced the size of morphological structures associated with vision in the African cichlid Pseudocrenilabrus multicolor. Parental fish were collected from two sites (clear swamp, turbid river) in western Uganda. F1 broods from each population were split and reared under clear and turbid rearing treatments until maturity. We measured morphological traits associated with the visual sensory system (eye diameter, pupil diameter, axial l..., , , # Data from: Turbidity drives plasticity in the eyes and brains of an African cichlid

This file contains metadata for two files used in five Rscripts associated with this manuscript.

#### README: rawdata.xlsx used in sizestd.R, biometric-table-cichlid.R
All code is provided for the analyses as described in the manuscript.

Pseudocrenilabrus multicolor (haplochromine cichlid fish) were collected from two sites in western Uganda and used as the parental population for a experiment that looked at visual morphology in response to rearing treatment (clear vs. turbid) over development. Each row in the dataset represents metrics for a single fish.

Variable Description

ID individual number assigned to each fish
Population coded for variable for each Population (1=River, 2=Swamp)
Rearing coded for variable for rearing treatment (1=Turbid, 2=Clear)
Brood brood identifier
Age age of fish in days
SL standard length of fish (mm)
Weight mass of fish (g)
ED eye diameter (m...