DOI: 10.5061/dryad.gmsbcc2rw
title: Data from: Morphological disparity and evolutionary rates of cranial and postcranial characters in sloths (Mammalia, Pilosa, Folivora)

description: Sloth morphological evolution has been widely studied qualitatively, with
 comparative anatomy and morpho-functional approaches, or through
 quantitative assessments of morphological variation using morphometrics.
 Only recently, however, have folivoran morphological disparity and
 evolutionary rates begun to be evaluated using discrete character data.
 Nonetheless, patterns of morphological evolution in separate character
 partitions have not been investigated, neither the relative influence of,
 on the one hand, phylogeny, and on the other, dietary and locomotory
 adaptations of sloths. Here we evaluate those patterns using a
 phylomorphospace approach, quantifying morphological disparity and
 evolutionary rates, and investigating possible drivers of morphological
 evolution for cranial and postcranial characters in Folivora. The
 evolution of the morphology in those partitions is associated with
 distinct patterns of disparity among clades and ecological groups, even
 though the two partitions do not differ substantially in overall
 evolutionary tempo. Historical processes shaped the morphological
 evolution of sloths more consistently than ecological ones, although
 changes in postcranial characters also seem to be associated with
 locomotory adaptations, in which morphological convergences were much more
 common. We also discuss important methodological trade-offs in
 investigations of partitioned datasets mostly composed of fossil taxa.
description: <strong>DATA</strong> Phylogenetic
 data (sloths_data.nex & sloths_tree.tre) was obtained from the
 published study of Casali et al. 2022
 (doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlac092). Classification of
 each tip and node into phylogenetic, ecological and convergence
 hypotheses' groups (sloths_info.csv) was obtained from the literature
 (see Supplementary Table S2 for a detailed account), or was defined for
 this study according to the results obtained estimating ancestral states
 and evaluating phylomorphospace patterns. The
 'ggphylomorpho' R fuction is available in GitHub (https://github.com/wabarr/ggphylomorpho, v.0.2), being modified for this study. The data files are meant to be opened in the R programming environment with a custom R_script.R file.   <strong>SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</strong> Eigenvalues and eigenvectors resulting from Principal Coordinate Analyses are provided as Supplementary Information.
description: The custom R_script.R file reproduces all analyses carried in the
 study. The following files are necessary to run the
 script, and must be in the user R working directory: 1
 - sloths_data.nex - morphological dataset with 510 discrete characters
 from Casali et al. 2022 (doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlac092) 2 - sloths_tree.tre - time-calibrated tree (chronogram) from Casali et al. 2022 (doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlac092) 3 - sloths_info.csv - comma-delimited file classifying each tip and node according to phylogenetic, ecological and convergence hypotheses' groups. 4 - ggphylomorpho_mod - a modified version of the code for the R function ggphylomorpho v.0.2 (https://github.com/wabarr/ggphylomorpho).