Data from the paper: The genetics, evolution, and maintenance of a biological rock-paper-scissors game

Side-blotched lizards (Uta stansburiana) play a biological rock-paper-scissors game in which three differently colored male morphs utilize alternative mating strategies. This polymorphsim was previously posited to arise from three alleles at one locus. We identified the genetic basis of this polymorphism, using genome-wide association studies. Orange usurper and blue mate-guarder morphs were associated with two divergent haplotypes in the regulatory region of the sepiapterin reductase gene, but yellow sneaker morphs appear to arise via phenotypic plasticity from the same genetic background as blue-morphs. We aligned genome assemblies for an orange and blue-morph to determine that the associated genetic region was not in a chromosomal inversion. We studied the genetic diversity of the morph-associated region and found that it had elevated nucleotide diversity, consistent with balancing selection. We used RNA-seq data to show that there were difference in gene expression among the morphs...., , , # Data from the paper: The genetics, evolution, and maintenance of a biological rock-paper-scissors game

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.4qrfj6qq7](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4qrfj6qq7)

## Description of the data and file structure

We investigated the genetic basis of the three throat-color morphs (orange, blue, and yellow) found in side-blotched lizards that correspond to different male mating strategies.  To do this, we conducted analyses of the morph phenotypes, genetic association studies, comparisons between different reference genomes, gene expression (RNAseq) analyses, analyses of genetic diversity, analyses of recombination, phylogenetic analyses, and analyses of the frequencies of the morphs in the field.  We found that a single region upstream of the gene for sepiapterin reductase (*SPR*) is associated with the morph phenotypes.  However, blue and yellow-morphs appear to arise via phenotypic plasticity from the same genetic background.  We also conducted multiple simulations..., **Changes after Nov 4, 2025:** The file \"Uta_DNAseq_samples_with_SRA_accession_numbers.xlsx\" has been updated to include two additional Genbank accession numbers associated with the samples.