Colonization of North America Boosted the Diversification of Whiptail Lizards

ABSTRACT Diversification is frequently associated with change—anything from colonizing a new area to evolving a new trait. Once a lineage changes, the organisms may be able to exploit previously unavailable ecological opportunities and release pressures from predators, parasites, and competitors, wh...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology and evolution 2024-10, Vol.14 (10), p.e70418-n/a
Main Authors: Nappo, Humberto Coelho, Colli, Guarino Rinaldi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biodiversity
Biogeography
Body size
Body temperature
diversification analysis
Ecological effects
ecological niche overlap
Ecological niches
Environmental conditions
Evolution & development
Fossils
Geographical distribution
habitat availability
Habitats
Lizards
Niche overlap
Niches
Parasites
Phylogenetics
Physiology
Predators
Speciation
state‐dependent speciation‐extinction
Statistical tests
Teiidae
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Summary:ABSTRACT Diversification is frequently associated with change—anything from colonizing a new area to evolving a new trait. Once a lineage changes, the organisms may be able to exploit previously unavailable ecological opportunities and release pressures from predators, parasites, and competitors, which may increase the speciation rate. Modern teiid lizards originated in South America but managed to colonize and diversify in North America. We assessed whether geographic distribution, body size, and body temperatures are associated with teiid diversification using GeoHiSSE and inverse equal‐splits statistics with simulation tests. We also estimated speciation rates with MiSSE to account for the effect of unmeasured variables. Moreover, we assessed the ecological niche overlap between North American (including Caribbean) teiids and their sister clade in South America. Our results indicate that only distribution range affected diversification, but we discuss that the available data might not have been enough to assess the effect of body temperatures. We also show that North American teiids have a broader ecological niche encompassing almost all environmental conditions used by their sister clade in South America but expanding mainly toward arid areas. Our results suggest that this expansion significantly impacted teiid diversification due to the seizing of ecological opportunities or ecological release, but we do not discard possible effects of phenotypic evolution. Teiids increased their diversification rates upon colonization of North America, which was associated with an ecological niche expansion toward drier areas. This increment in diversification was not shown to be associated with phenotypic traits, which suggests it was due to ecological opportunity and/or ecological release.
ISSN:2045-7758
2045-7758
DOI:10.1002/ece3.70418