Data from: Differential survival between visual environments supports a role of divergent sensory drive in cichlid fish speciation

Identifying the selective forces that initiate ecological speciation is a major challenge in evolutionary biology. Sensory drive has been implicated in speciation in various taxa, largely based on phenotype-environment correlations and signatures of selection in sensory genes. Here, we present a reciprocal transplant experiment revealing species differences in performance in alternative visual environments, consistent with speciation by divergent sensory drive. The closely related cichlids Pundamilia pundamilia and P. nyererei inhabit different visual environments in Lake Victoria and show associated differences in visual system properties. Mimicking the two light environments in the laboratory, we find a substantial reduction in survival of both species when reared in the other species' visual environment. This implies that the observed differences in Pundamilia colour vision are indeed adaptive, and substantiates the implicit assumption in sensory drive speciation models that divergent environmental selection is strong enough to drive divergence in sensory properties.鉴定驱动生态物种形成（ecological speciation）的选择压力，是进化生物学领域的核心挑战之一。感官驱动（Sensory Drive）已被证实与多个类群的物种形成过程相关，相关证据主要来自表型-环境关联以及感官基因上的选择信号。本研究通过互惠移植实验，揭示了不同物种在替代性视觉环境中的表现差异，这与分歧感官驱动导致的物种形成模式相符。亲缘关系相近的慈鲷（cichlids）属物种Pundamilia pundamilia与P. nyererei栖息于维多利亚湖的不同视觉环境中，其视觉系统特性也呈现出相应差异。在实验室中模拟这两种光照环境后，我们发现当两个物种被饲养于对方的视觉环境中时，其存活率均出现显著下降。这一结果表明，所观测到的Pundamilia属物种的色觉差异确实具有适应性，同时也验证了感官驱动物种形成模型中的隐含假设：即分歧性环境选择的强度足以驱动感官特性的分化。