Data from "Robust sensory traits across light habitats: Visual signals but not receptors vary in centrarchids inhabiting distinct photic environments"

Visual communication in fish is often shaped by the light environment they inhabit, influencing both sensory (e.g., eye size, opsin gene expression), and signaling traits (e.g., body reflectance). This study explores the phenotypic variation in the visual communication traits of six species of centrarchids (Centrarchidae) inhabiting two contrasting light environments. We measured morphological, molecular, and signaling traits to determine their responses to photic conditions. Our findings reveal significant interspecific variation in sensory traits but no consistent phenotypic variation between light environments. Centrarchids showed robust visual systems with red-green dichromatic vision, which was largely unaffected by the different light habitats. We also found significant molecular evolution in the visual opsin genes, although these changes were not associated with environmental conditions. However, body reflectance displayed species-specific responses to environmental conditions, suggesting that signaling traits may be more flexible than sensory traits. Overall, our results challenge the generality of the current paradigm in visual ecology, which portrays visual systems in fish as highly tunable owing to photic conditions. Our study highlights the potential evolutionary or developmental constraints on centrarchid visual systems and their implications for adaptability to various habitats and novel environmental threats.

This dataset includes underwater light measurements, retinal transcriptomics, eye morphology, and spectral reflectance data to assess the effects of environment and species identity on eye size, opsin gene expression, chromophore usage, and body reflectance of centrarchids. Furthermore, we test for signatures of molecular evolution on the amino acid sequence of visual opsin genes across species and populations. By combining data on the visual ecology of different species from two distinct light environments, we ask i) do the visual traits of centrarchids vary across photic environments? and ii) are phenotypic responses to light conditions shared among species or are they species-specific? Overall, we found robust visual systems across species (no environmental effect) but variable body reflectance across species and environments (genotype-by-environment interaction, G × E). This suggests that divergent species-specific responses in signaling might help offset the lack of fine-tuning in the visual system of centrarchids. 

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