Abiotic factors that prompt major ecological transitions: are fish on land to escape an intolerable aquatic environment?

Colonisation of novel habitats are important event in evolution, but the factors that initially prompt such ecological transitions are often unknown. The invasion of land by fish is an extreme habitat transition that offers an opportunity to empirically investigate the causes of major ecological transitions. The intertidal ecotone—and rockpools in particular—have been an important staging ground for transitions onto land. Classic hypotheses focus on the adverse abiotic conditions of rockpools at low tide as the instigator of fish voluntarily stranding themselves out of water, which can then lead to the evolution of an amphibious lifestyle. To test these hypotheses, we studied the abiotic conditions of 54 rockpools on the island of Guam where there are various species of aquatic, amphibious, and terrestrial blenny fishes. We found little support for the expected deterioration of abiotic conditions in standing pools at low tide (salinity, pH, and oxygen), and fish were not seen to be excl..., , , # Abiotic factors that prompt major ecological transitions: are fish on land to escape an intolerable aquatic environment?

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ht76hdrrd](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ht76hdrrd)

## Description of the data and file structure

All data were collected or compiled by Terry Ord ([[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])).

Related manuscript (MS) information

* MS Reference Number: FE-2024-01331
* MS Title: Abiotic factors that prompt major ecological transitions: are fish on land to escape an intolerable aquatic environment?
* MS Authors: Ord, Terry J; Surovic, Elizabeth; Vaz, Diego; Irisarri, Iker
* MS Journal: Functional Ecology

## OrdTJ\_FE-2024-01331\_rockpool\_volumes.csv

Data used to validate the method for estimating rockpool volume

#### FILE STRUCTURE AND UNITS OF MEASUREMENTS

The file is a .csv file that can be opened using any text, spreadsheet, or statistical program.

There are no missing values.

* rockpool = The unique ID label for each ro...