DOI: 10.5061/dryad.80gb5mksk
title: The flooded habitat adaptation, niche differentiation and evolution of Myristicaceae trees in the Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot in India

description: Environmental heterogeneity is considered as one of the main drivers of
 habitat specialization and niche evolution among tropical plant lineages,
 and local scale habitat specialization promotes niche differentiation
 among sister taxa. In this study, we examined the degree to which habitat
 specialization lead to niche differentiation across the distribution range
 of a given species using five species of the family Myristicaceae native
 to Western Ghats, India as an example. In the Western Ghats, Myristicaceae
 species occur in two main habitat types, namely freshwater swamps (flooded
 habitat), and terra-firme forest (non-flooded habitat) distributed across
 a seasonal flooding gradient. First, we reconstructed the evolutionary
 history of flooded habitat specialization among global and Western Ghats
 Myristicaceae by mapping flooded habitat association and traits conferring
 flood tolerance (example: aerial roots) on a dated phylogeny. Then we
 investigated climatic niche differences among lineages occupying flooded
 and terra-firme habitats using occurrence data and environmental
 variables. Our analysis revealed swampy habitat occurrence as the probable
 ancestral state with subsequent speciation events leading to adaptation to
 non-swampy habitats. We also show that traits conferring flood tolerance
 have evolved independently several times during the evolution of
 Myristicaceae. Furthermore, phylogenetically distantly related
 Myristicaceae taxa occupying different habitats (flooded and terra-firme
 habitat) in Western Ghats show significant niche divergence. Overall, the
 repeated gain of swampy habitat specialization and associated
 morphological traits and evidence for habitat associated climatic niche
 divergence among Myristicaceae taxa suggest that seasonal flooding may
 have been an important driver of ecological diversification in this
 primitive plant family.
description: This datasets contains all the data used in the paper "The
 flooded habitat adaptation, niche differentiation and evolution of
 Myristicaceae trees in the Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot in
 India" You can use the data to reproduce all the
 analysis, figures, and tables in the article. All the
 analysis were done in R statistical software (http://www.r-project.org/)
 2013. Data files (.nex, fasta, tre, .XML)
 <strong>1 .tre file</strong>
 infile.nex.conFinal.tre: Bayesian phylogeny of Western Ghats
 Myristicaceae myconsensWGMY2.tre: Maximum Likelihood
 phylogeny of Western Ghats Myristicaceae MBGlobal.tre:
 Bayesian phylogeny of Global Myristicaceae
 MyristicaDated.tre: BEAST dated phylogeny of global
 Myristicaceae <strong>2 .nex
 file</strong> MBConcatAllignMyri3: MrBayes input
 file for Western Ghats Myristicaceae
 MBConcatAllignMyriML: Maximum Likelihood input file for Western
 Ghats Myristicaceae
 ConcatenatedMyristicaceaeFinalGarli: Maximum Likelihood analysis
 input allignment file for Global Myristicaceae
 MyristicaceaeMBFull: MrBayes analysis input allignment file for
 Global Myristicaceae <strong>3 .fasta
 file</strong> Individual gene allignment
 files Myrisricaceae2_psbA-trnH: psbA-Trnh
 Myristicaceae_18s: 18s Myristicaceae_accD:
 accD Myristicaceae_matK: matK
 Myristicaceae_ndhf: ndhf Myristicaceae_Rbcl:
 Rbcl Myristicaceae_rpob: rpob
 Myristicaceae_rpoC1: rpoC1 Myristicaceae_Trnf:
 Trnf Myristicaceae_Trnl: Trnl
 <strong>4  .XML file</strong>
 BEASTMyristicaceae: BEAST analysis input allignment file for
 Global Myristicaceae