Evolutionary insights into Felidae iris color through ancestral state reconstruction

There have been almost no studies with an evolutionary perspective on eye (iris) color, outside of humans and domesticated animals. Extant members of the family Felidae have a great interspecific and intraspecific diversity of eye colors, in stark contrast to their closest relatives, all of which have only brown eyes. This makes the felids a great model to investigate the evolution of eye color in natural populations. Through machine learning cluster image analysis of publicly available photographs of all felid species, as well as a number of subspecies, five felid eye colors were identified: brown, green, yellow, gray, and blue. Using phylogenetic comparative methods, the presence or absence of these colors was reconstructed on a phylogeny. Additionally, through a new color analysis method, the specific shades of the ancestors’ eyes were quantitatively reconstructed. The ancestral felid population was predicted to have brown-eyed individuals, as well as a novel evolution of gray-eyed i..., Data set
In order to sample all felid species, we took advantage of public databases. Images of individuals from 40 extant felid species (all but Felis catus, excluded due to the artificial selection on eye color in domesticated cats by humans), as well as 12 identifiable subspecies and four outgroups (banded linsang, Prionodon linsang; spotted hyena, Crocuta crocuta; common genet, Genetta genetta; and fennec fox, Vulpes zerda), were found using Google Images and iNaturalist using both the scientific name and the common name for each species as search terms. This approach, taking advantage of the enormous resource of publicly available images, allows access to a much larger data set than in the published scientific literature or than would be possible to obtain de novo for this study. Public image-based methods for character state classification have been used previously, such as in a phylogenetic analysis of felid coat patterns (Werdelin and Olsson 1997) and a catalog of iris color var..., , # Reference Information

## Provenance for this README

* File name: README_FelidDataset.md
* Authors: Julius A. Tabin
* Other contributors: Katherine A. Chiasson
* Date created: 2023-02-15
* Date most recently modified: 2024-05-27

## Dataset Version and Release History

* Current Version:
* Number: 2.5.0
* Date: 2024-05-27
* Persistent identifier: DOI: 10.5061/dryad.s4mw6m9b0
* Summary of changes: Updated to reflect an improved analysis pipeline
* Embargo Provenance: n/a
* Scope of embargo: n/a
* Embargo period: n/a

## Dataset Attribution and Usage

* Dataset Title: Data for the article \"Evolutionary Insights Into Felidae Iris Color Through Ancestral State Reconstruction\"
* Persistent Identifier: [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.s4mw6m9b0](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.s4mw6m9b0)
* Dataset Contributors:
* Creators: Julius A. Tabin and Katherine A. Chiasson
* Date of Issue: 2023-02-15
* License: Use of these data from Zen...