DOI: 10.5061/dryad.m0cfxpp0k
title: Developmental life history is associated with variation in rates of climatic niche evolution in a salamander adaptive radiation

description: Rates of climatic niche evolution vary widely across the tree of life and
 are strongly associated with rates of diversification and the accumulation
 of species diversity among clades. However, why the climatic niche evolves
 more rapidly in some lineages than others remains unclear. Variation in
 life history traits often plays a key role in determining the
 environmental conditions under which species can survive, and therefore,
 could impact the rate at which lineages can expand in available climatic
 niche space. Here, we explore the relationships among life-history
 variation, climatic niche breadth, and rates of climatic niche evolution.
 We reconstruct a new phylogeny for the genus Desmognathus, an adaptive
 radiation of salamanders distributed across eastern North America, based
 on nuclear and mitochondrial genes. Using this phylogeny, we estimate
 rates of climatic niche evolution for species with long, short, and no
 aquatic larval stage. Rates of climatic niche evolution are unrelated to
 the mean climatic niche breadth of species with different life histories.
 Instead, we find that the evolution of a short larval period promotes
 greater exploration of climatic space, leading to increased rates of
 climatic niche evolution across species having this trait. We propose that
 morphological and physiological differences associated with variation in
 larval stage length underlie the heterogeneous ability of lineages to
 explore climatic niche space. Rapid rates of climatic niche evolution
 among lineages with short larval periods were an important dimension of
 the clade’s adaptive radiation and likely contributed to the rapid rate of
 lineage accumulation following the evolution of an aquatic life history in
 this clade. Our results show how variation in a key life-history trait can
 constrain or promote divergence of the climatic niche, leading to
 variation in rates of climatic niche evolution among lineages.
description: The following files are included:
 Desmog_24taxa11loci_concatenated.nex contains the aligned,
 concatenated DNA sequences for all 11 loci for single exemplars of each
 species. Partitions are included in a mrbayes block below the DNA
 sequences. Desmog_24taxa11loci_chronogram.nex is the
 BEAST chronogram from the concatenated analysis.
 Desmog_62taxa11loci_alignments.zip contains the phased DNA
 sequence alignment (nexus format) of each of the 11 loci used in the
 species tree analysis. Also included is starBEAST_speciestraits.txt which
 assigns each of the 62 individuals to one of 24 species.
 Desmog_62taxa11loci_speciestree.nex is the species tree from the
 *BEAST species tree analysis of 11 loci for 62 individuals of 24
 species. Desmog_coords_bioclim_data.xlsx contains tab
 1: latitude and longitude for localities of each species and the bioclim
 variables for those localities, tab 2: snout-vent length (SVL in mm),
 larval period, and microhabitat of each species.
 Supplemental_Tables.docx contains tables S1: information on DNA
 loci and primers, S2: nucleotide substitution models used for each locus
 in analyses, and S3: specimen/sample information.