Species-Specific Relationships between Water Transparency and Male Coloration within and between Two Closely Related Lake Victoria Cichlid Species

Table 1

Study site characteristics and numbers of individuals collected.

	Luanso	Kissenda	Python	Makobe	Ruti
Maximum depth of the rock-sand interface (m)^1	5-6	7-8	7-8	8–12	>13
Mean Secchi transparency; (cm, mean ± se)^2	54±4 (𝑛=9)	78±8(𝑛=8)	106±7(𝑛=11)	222±7(𝑛=88)	250±23(𝑛=7)
Spectral width (and range, nm) of the light spectrum at 2 m depth and 0.002 W/m^2 light intensity	195 (497–692)	247 (477–724)	264 (455–719)	366 (362–728)	390 (343–733)
Sampling dates for irradiance spectrophotometry (2010)	29/5, 7/6	17/5, 1/6, 9/6	20/5, 26/5, 4/6, 5/6	22/5, 27/5, 3/6, 10/6	24/5, 31/5, 12/6
Sample size P. pundamilia	10^3	8	10	11	9
Sample size P. nyererei		6	16	19	17

¹Data from [23] and pers. obs.
²Data collected between 2000 and 2010. Water transparency varies seasonally, but differences between sampling locations are highly consistent (for Secchi readings collected during 2000–2010 at our four sampling sites: anova controlling for sampling date: 𝐹_3,107=25.41, 𝑃≪0.0001).
³P. sp. “Luanso” replaces both species at this locality.