Automated workflows using Quantitative Colour Pattern Analysis (QCPA): a guide to batch processing and downstream data analysis.

Unlabelled: Animal and plant colouration presents a striking dimension of phenotypic variation, the study of which has driven general advances in ecology, evolution, and animal behaviour. Quantitative Colour Pattern Analysis (QCPA) is a dynamic framework for analysing colour patterns through the eyes of non-human observers. However, its extensive array of user-defined image processing and analysis tools means image analysis is often time-consuming.

Causes of variability in estimates of mutational variance from mutation accumulation experiments.

Characteristics of the new phenotypic variation introduced via mutation have broad implications in evolutionary and medical genetics. Standardized estimates of this mutational variance, VM, span 2 orders of magnitude, but the causes of this remain poorly resolved. We investigated estimate heterogeneity using 2 approaches.

Digest: More than just a pretty fin: The evolution of sexual ornaments in killifish.

What conditions favor the evolution of elaborate sexual ornaments? In freshwater killifishes, Sowersby et al. found that larger sexual ornaments were negatively associated with locomotive performance. Although selection clearly favored large ornamental fins in environments with fewer predators, there was no clear association between large ornamental fins and differences in life-history strategy.

Repeatability of locomotor performance and morphology-locomotor performance relationships.

There is good evidence that natural selection drives the evolution of locomotor performance, but the processes that generate the among-individual variation for selection to act on are relatively poorly understood. We measured prolonged swimming performance, U, and morphology in a large cohort (n=461) of wild-type zebrafish (Danio rerio) at ∼6 months and again at ∼9 months. Using mixed-model analyses to estimate repeatability as the intraclass correlation coefficient, we determined that U was significantly repeatable (r=0.