Meeting Abstract
Beginning with Darwin and Wallace, biologists have debated the purpose of bright colors and complex color patterns in coral reef fishes. Their explanations have ranged from sexual ornamentation to advertised aggression, species recognition, crypsis, and other types of communication. Support for each of these explanations and many others has been demonstrated for individual species, however, few studies have investigated the ecological and life history correlates of color patterns in a clade of fishes using phylogenetic comparative methods. Here, we investigated 165 out of 200 species of moray eels and placed each species into one of six color pattern categories. We developed a “crowd-sourcing” approach to have undergraduate biology students independently assign species into one of six color pattern categories to assure that there was no researcher-bias in the assignments. We then tested for associations between color patterns and habitat, diet, and sexual system using phylogenetic comparative methods for 46 of those species, and non-phylogenetic methods for all 165 species. We find that the color patterns that are the most disruptive to the outline of the fish’s body, such as sharply defined spots or black and white stripping, are significantly more prevalent in species that inhabit shallow waters, consume hard-bodied prey, and have a protogynous sexual system. Species with more cryptic color patterns or uniform coloration tend to inhabit deeper reefs, prey on other fishes, and have a gonochoristic sexual system. This work shows that a variety of factors, including neutral processes, habitat depth, diet and sexual system may affect the evolution of diverse color patterns in coral reef fishes.
