DOI: 10.5061/dryad.p39d12d
title: Data from: Sexual selection, body mass, and molecular evolution interact to predict diversification in birds

description: Sexual selection is a powerful agent of evolution, driving
 microevolutionary changes in the genome and macroevolutionary rates of
 lineage diversification. The mechanisms by which sexual selection might
 influence macroevolution remain poorly understood. For example, sexual
 selection might drive positive selection for key adaptations that
 facilitate diversification. Furthermore, sexual selection might be a
 general driver of molecular evolutionary rate. We lay out some of the
 potential mechanisms that create a link between sexual selection and
 diversification, based on causal effects on other life-history traits such
 as body mass and the rate of molecular evolution. Birds are ideally suited
 for testing the importance of these relationships because of their diverse
 reproductive systems and the multiple evolutionary radiations that have
 produced their astounding modern diversity. We show that sexual selection
 (measured as the degree of polygyny) interacts with the rate of molecular
 evolution and with body mass to predict species richness at the genus
 level. A high degree of polygyny and rapid molecular evolution are
 positively associated with the net rate of diversification, with the two
 factors being especially important for explaining diversification in
 large-bodied taxa. Our findings further suggest that mutation rates
 underpin some of the macroevolutionary effects of sexual selection. We
 synthesize the existing theory on sexual selection as a force for
 diversity and propose avenues for exploring this association using genome
 data.
description: Alignments, data tables,
 and trees used for analysesThis repository
 accompanies the manuscript "Social mating system, body mass, and
 molecular evolution interact to predict diversification in birds" The
 data used for statistical analyses are contained in the
 genera.data.tables.and.trees.Rdata file, and can be loaded into R using
 the load function. Once the data have been loaded. The following data
 frame elements will be found: datmit354trans contains the data with
 molecular rates estimated from mitochondrial loci. datnuc173trans contains
 the data with molecular rates estimated from nuclear loci. datmix363
 contains data of only three variables for the combination of genera for
 which any type of molecular data were included in other analyses. tr173,
 tr352, and tr363 contain maximum clade credibility trees used for the main
 phylogenetic regression analyses. tr173.100 and tr352.100 contain the
 sample of posterior trees from Jetz et al. (2012) used for performing
 replicate phylogenetic regression analyses. The file
 linear.model.summaries.100trees.Rdata contains the summaries of the 100
 replicate phylogenetic regressions performed for each of the 14 models
 examined in the study. The names of each of the models corresponds to the
 names used in the supplementary infromation tables. This repository also
 includes the sequence alignments used for estimating molecular rates, and
 the species-specific data set of mating system and mass from which
 genus-level values were calculated. For enquiries contact: Maider Iglesias
 (miglesias15@gmail.com) or David A. Duchene
 (david.duchene@sydney.edu.au)bird_sexual_selection-master.zip