DOI: 10.5061/dryad.w0vt4b91c
title: Data from: Correlated evolution of conspicuous coloration and burrowing in crayfish

description: Conspicuous colors have fascinated biologists for centuries, leading to
 research on the evolution and functional significance of color traits. In
 many cases, research suggests that many conspicuous colors are adaptive
 and serve some function in sexual or aposematic signaling. In other cases,
 a lack of evidence for the adaptive value of conspicuous colors troubles
 biologists, such as within organisms that live underground and are rarely
 exposed to the surface. Here, we use phylogenetic comparative methods to
 investigate color evolution throughout freshwater crayfishes that vary in
 burrowing ability. Within the taxa we analyzed, conspicuous colors have
 evolved independently over 50 times; and these conspicuous colors are more
 common in semi-terrestrial crayfishes that construct extensive burrows.
 The intuitive, but not evolutionary-justified assumption when presented
 these results is to assume that these colors are adaptive. But contrary to
 this intuition, we discuss the hypothesis that coloration in crayfish is
 neutral. Supporting these ideas, small population sizes and reduced gene
 flow within semi-terrestrial burrowing crayfishes may lead to fixation in
 color-phenotype mutations. Overall, our work brings into question the
 traditional view of animal coloration as a perfectly adapted phenotype.
description: # Correlated evolution of conspicuous coloration and burrowing in crayfish
 Author: Dylan Padilla Date: 2024-06-01 GENERAL INFORMATION 1. Title of
 Dataset: Data from: Correlated evolution of conspicuous coloration and
 burrowing in crayfish 2. Author Information A. Principal Investigator
 Contact Information Name: Dylan J. Padilla Perez Institution: Arizona
 State University Address: School of Life Sciences Email:
 [dpadil10@asu.edu](mailto:dpadil10@asu.edu) 3. Author Information A.
 Principal Investigator Contact Information Name: Zackary A. Graham
 Institution: West Liberty University Address: Department of Organismal
 Biology, Ecology, and Zoo Science Email:
 [zackary.graham@westliberty.edu](mailto:zackary.graham@westliberty.edu)
 DATA & FILE OVERVIEW 1. Description of datasets The data used in this
 study represent a subset of a dataset assembled by the lead author. File
 List: File 1 Name: 'col_data_updated.csv' Description: Dataset
 used in the study. NAs indicate missing values. Column header include the
 following variables: species_ID: Scientific name of the species included
 in the study family: Reported family for each species stern_phylogeny:
 Phylogeny used for comparative analyses.
 traditional_hobbs_burrow_category: Classification of burrowing behavior
 according to Hobbs 1942 and Hobbs 1981 combined_burrow_category: We used a
 burrowing classification which separates crayfish based on their ability
 to create burrows in semi-terrestrial habitats or aquatic habitats.
 Effectively, this takes the most widely used burrowing
 classification formalized by Hobbs 1942 and Hobbs 1981 and combines what
 was previously three ecological groups (primary, secondary, and tertiary
 burrowers) into two groups: semi-terrestrial burrowers and aquatic
 burrowers. conspic_color: Two-level factor indicating whether the species
 is conspicuous (yes) or not (no). conspicous_body_color_present: Two-level
 factor indicating whether the species is conspicuous (yes) or not (no).
 body_color_zg: Categorization of body color according to leading author.
 body_color_Observer1-10: Categorization of body color according to 10
 random observers. conspicious_claw_color_present: Two-level factor
 indicating whether the species' claws are conspicuous (yes) or not
 (no). claw_color: Categorization of claw color according to leading author
 body_color_(red-orange-purple...): Two-level factor indicating whether the
 species' claws have a given color (1) or not (0). File 2 Name:
 'col_data.csv' Description: This is an outdated version of the
 dataset described above. The variables included in this dataset can be
 interpreted following the same description provided above. File 3 Name:
 'stern.2017.ml.new.tree' Description: Crayfish phylogeny based
 on Stern et al., 2017. File 4 Name: 'index.Rmd' Description:
 Workflow of the analyses written in rmarkdown. File 5 Name:
 'index.html' Description: Rendered 'index.Rmd' file
 containing workflow of the analyses. SHARING/ACCESS INFORMATION 1. Links
 to other publicly accessible locations of the data:
 [https://dylan-padilla.github.io/crayfish-coloration/](https://dylan-padilla.github.io/crayfish-coloration/) SESSION INFORMATION Instrument- or software-specific information needed to interpret the data: We performed all the analyses using the free software R 4.3.2 (2023-10-31), Running under: macOS Sonoma 14.2.1.