DOI: 10.5061/dryad.5sr48
title: Data from: Key ornamental innovations facilitate diversification in an avian radiation

description: Patterns of biodiversity are often explained by ecological processes,
 where traits that promote novel ways of interacting with the environment
 (key innovations) play a fundamental role in promoting diversification.
 However, sexual selection and social competition can also promote
 diversification through rapid evolution of ornamental traits. Because
 selection can operate only on existing variation, the tendency of
 ornamental traits to constrain or enable the production of novel
 phenotypes is a crucial but often overlooked aspect of diversification.
 Starlings are a speciose group characterized by diverse iridescent colors
 produced by nanometer-scale arrays of melanin-containing organelles
 (melanosomes) that play a central role in sexual selection and social
 competition. We show that evolutionary lability of these colors is
 associated with both morphological and lineage diversification in African
 starlings. The solid rod-like melanosome morphology has evolved in a
 directional manner into three more optically complex forms that can
 produce a broader range of colors than the ancestral form, resulting in
 (i) faster color evolution, (ii) the occupation of novel, previously
 unreachable regions of colorspace, and ultimately (iii) accelerated
 lineage diversification. As in adaptive radiations, key innovations in
 ornament production can provide high phenotypic trait variability, leading
 to dramatic effects on the tempo and mode of diversification.
description: Maximum Clade
 Credibility phyologenetic tree of African starlingsMaximum Clade
 Credibility tree for the 48 African starling species calculated from the
 full posterior probability distribution of the BEAST analysis, with
 melanosome morphology regimes for color evolution mapped on
 branches.mcctree.treesample of 500 phylogenetic trees of African starlingssample of 500 trees from the posterior distribution of phylogenetic trees of the 48 African starling species from the BEAST analysis, with melanosome morphology regimes for color evolution mapped on branches.posteriorsample.treesColor data for male African starling speciesSpecies average color variables of measurements from male African starlings. Variables represent the first two Principal Components calculated from the relative quantum catches of the four cones involved in color vision (PC1 and PC2), and brightness (log-transformed average reflectance) for 10 body patches.color.males.csvColor data for female African starling speciesSpecies average color variables of measurements from female African starlings. Variables represent the first two Principal Components calculated from the relative quantum catches of the four cones involved in color vision (PC1 and PC2), and brightness (log-transformed average reflectance) for 10 body patches.color.females.csvMetadata for the presence of iridescence/eumelanic plumage patchesMetadata for African starling species analyzed regarding the presence of iridescent or eumelanic colors across the 10 body patches of males and females. Non-iridescent, non-eumelanic colors were not included in the analyses.iridescentpatches.csv