Data from: Body size determines eyespot size and presence in coral reef fishes

Full description

This project aimed to determine how body size shapes the size and presence of eyespots in coral reef fishes. Eyespots are a marking that resembles the vertebrate eye. The first dataset contains both linear and area measurements of the eye and eyespot to analyse any relationships that may be present between these two features. The second dataset contains length measurements of fishes from a public image database (the Smithsonian Institutes Division of Fishes Collection). The species included are eyespot-bearing species, but many only possess this marking at various points during their ontongeny. Therefore, the dataset contains measurements of inidividuals that possess an eyespot, as well as length measurements of individuals that do not. This was used to analyze the size distributions of eyespot-bearing and eyespot-lacking individuals, as well as calculating the likelihood of having an eyespot as bodysize increases. Furthermore, this dataset is accompanied by a .tre file. This is a phylogenetic tree that was used to account for non-independence between samples in the eye-eyespot regressions. It can be viewed by using the software 'FigTree' or by using the 'APE' or 'phytools' libraries in R.

The full methodology is available in the Open Access publication from the Related Publications link below.