Ecologically-related variation of digit morphology in Cyrtodactylus (Gekkota, Squamata) reveals repeated origins of incipient adhesive toepads

The exploitation of different locomotor substrates in different ecological niches has driven the evolution of specialized morphological structures, and similar ecological demands, such as the structure of the microhabitat, often lead to convergent or parallel evolution. The evolution of adhesive toepads in geckos remains understudied because of the paucity of phylogenetically informed investigations of candidate clades exhibiting purported incipient expression of these (i.e., species having evolved some, but not all, parts of the complex adhesive system of pad-bearing geckos). Using Cyrtodactylus, a speciose genus with well-established ecotypes, we tested the hypothesis that microhabitats that require more climbing will lead to the acquisition of incipient adhesive morphology. We measured subdigital scale area, a proxy for adhesive toepad evolution, and quantified subdigital scale shape for 77 of the 354 described species, including at least one representative of each ecotype. Subdigita..., We measured the subdigital scale area and quantified the subdigital scale shape of 77 Cyrtodactylus species from museum voucher specimens, measuring 3 to 10 specimens per species. For details of data collection see the methods section of the paper: Ecologically-related variation of digit morphology in Cyrtodactylus (Gekkota, Squamata) reveals repeated origins of incipient adhesive toepads, Riedel et al. 2024, Functional Ecology., , # Data from: Ecologically-related variation of digit morphology in *Cyrtodactylus* (Gekkota, Squamata) reveals repeated origins of incipient adhesive toepads

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.f4qrfj73j](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.f4qrfj73j)

This is the dataset for our publication \"Ecologically-related variation of digit morphology in *Cyrtodactylus* (Gekkota, Squamata) reveals repeated origins of incipient adhesive toepads\" published in Functional Ecology by Jendrian Riedel, Katrin Eisele, Mariam Gabelaia, Timothy E. Higham, Joseph Wu, Quyen Hanh Do, Truong Quang Nguyen, Camila G. Meneses, Rafe M. Brown, Thomas Ziegler, L. Lee Grismer, Anthony P. Russell & Dennis Rödder.

## Description of the data and file structure

Dataset for Riedel et al., 2024 containing a detailed list of 1) the voucher numbers and sources of all measured specimens and area measurements per specimen (SVL measurements from Riedel et al. (2024)), 2) 2D geometric morphometric coordinates per specimen (semi-lan...