Tropical origin, global diversification and dispersal in the pond damselflies (Coenagrionoidea) revealed by a new molecular phylogeny
Creators: name: Willink, Beatriz
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: Biogeography
extinction
Graphical Models
latitudinal diversity gradient
niche conservatism
Paleogeography
Speciation

description: The processes responsible for the formation of Earth's most conspicuous diversity pattern, the latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG), remain unexplored for many clades in the Tree of Life. Here, we present a densely-sampled and dated molecular phylogeny for the most speciose clade of damselflies worldwide (Odonata: Coenagrionoidea), and investigate the role of time, macroevolutionary processes and biome-shift dynamics in shaping the LDG in this ancient insect superfamily. We used process-based biogeographic models to jointly infer ancestral ranges and speciation times, and to characterise within-biome dispersal and biome-shift dynamics across the cosmopolitan distribution of Coenagrionoidea. We also investigated temporal and biome-dependent variation in diversification rates. Our results uncover a tropical origin of pond damselflies and featherlegs ~ 105 Ma, while highligthing uncertainty of ancestral ranges within the tropics in deep time. Even though diversification rates have declined since the origin of this clade, global climate change and biome-shifts have slowly increased diversity in warm- and cold-temperate areas, where lineage turnover rates have been relatively higher. This study underscores the importance of biogeographic origin and time to diversify as important drivers of the LDG in pond damselflies and their relatives, while diversification dynamics have instead resulted in the formation of ephemeral species in temperate regions. Biome-shifts, although limited by tropical niche conservatism, have been the main factor reducing the steepness of the LDG in the last 30 Myr. With ongoing climate change and increasing northward range expansions of many damselfly taxa, the LDG may become less pronounced. Our results support recent calls to unify biogeographic and macroevolutionary approaches to increase our understanding of how latitudinal diversity gradients are formed and why they vary across time and among taxa.
description: All the code used in this study is recorded and described in the file COENPhylo_R1.html
Funding provided by: Swedish Research CouncilCrossref Funder Registry ID: https://ror.org/03zttf063Award Number: 2016-03356
Funding provided by: Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher EducationCrossref Funder Registry ID: https://ror.org/0561xc723Award Number: 
Funding provided by: Erik Philip Sörensens Stiftelse*Crossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number: 
Funding provided by: The Royal Physiographic Society of Lund*Crossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number: 
Funding provided by: Jörgen Lindströms Fund*Crossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number: 
Funding provided by: Lunds Djurskyddsfond*Crossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number:
description: Data collection processing and analyses are described in full in the Supplementary Material (PhyloSupporting_SysBio_R1.pdf)