Aim It is not trivial to estimate the relative contributions of dispersal, vicariance, and range contraction in explaining the present‐day distribution of ancient clades. In this study, we aim to infer the historical biogeography of bark and ambrosia beetles using a genus‐level time‐calibrated molecular phylogeny that encompasses 70% of all described genera. We also evaluate the potential influence of external factors, such as...

Aim In marine biogeography, many clades exhibit their greatest species richness in the Central Indo‐Pacific region, which includes the Indo‐Australian Archipelago. However, there is no consensus that this region was the ancestral cradle of clade's species richness. Orectolobiform sharks are a well‐known group of marine vertebrates that mostly inhabit the Central Indo‐Pacific region. By combining insights from molecular phyloge...

Traits that reduce predation success may evolve together, leading to repeated evolution of similar anti‐predator syndromes. In butterflies, predation likely shapes wing shape and colour patterns, promoting either aposematic or deflective features. Here, we studied the evolution of hindwing tail shape and colour pattern across swallowtail butterflies. Using standardised museum specimen photographs, we quantified colour variatio...

Aim The macroevolutionary processes underlying biome transitions and the geographical distribution of species diversity and ecological traits remain poorly understood in most clades. Here, we study tropical‐to‐temperate transitions in Cannabaceae (the hemp family) and hypothesize that pre‐adaptation (i.e., deciduous leaves) and ecological opportunities in temperate habitats have led to niche divergence and increased speciation...

Background Past studies linking geologic and climatic controls on speciation in the Himalaya, Tibet and Hengduan (HTH) regions do not fully capture the mechanisms underlying patterns of plant diversity and endemism in hyperdiverse mountain ecosystems. Aims This study sheds new light on the orogenic and climatic drivers of plant endemism and diversity in the HTH region and unravels the mechanisms behind plant speciation and ass...

Aim Testing the impact of climate on diversification is a major goal of evolutionary biology. Birth‐death models like palaeoenvironment‐dependent diversification (PDD) models, for example, allow exploring the potential correlations between diversification dynamics and past environmental changes, such as temperature, among other abiotic variables. So far, such studies have been limited to proxy‐derived global temperature trends...

Aim While the evolution of seasonal migration and its association with biogeography have been the subject of numerous studies, its influence on species diversification has rarely been examined. The aim of this study is to explain the atypical latitudinal diversity gradient in shorebirds: did seasonal migration influence diversification and did the gradient evolve from higher in situ diversification or repeated transitions? Loc...

Aim Discerning the relative role of geographical and ecological factors in promoting diversification is central to our understanding of the origin and maintenance of biodiversity. We explore the roles of geology and ecological tolerance in the diversification of a group of wingless beetles with low dispersal potential. Location Western Mediterranean (Iberian Peninsula and North Africa). Taxon Darkling beetles (Tenebrionidae: M...

The resource‐use hypothesis, proposed by E.S. Vrba, states that habitat fragmentation caused by climatic oscillations would affect particularly biome specialists (species inhabiting only one biome), which might show higher speciation and extinction rates than biome generalists. If true, lineages would accumulate biome‐specialist species. This effect would be particularly exacerbated for biomes located at the periphery of the g...

Aim Sea‐level changes have long been put forward to explain the colonization of Southeast Asian islands by freshwater aquatic organisms. We examined the relative impact of Sundaland geology since the Oligocene and of Pleistocene Eustatic Fluctuations on the mitochondrial lineage diversification of a species‐rich subfamily of freshwater fishes widely distributed in Southeast Asia. We specifically tested if the expansion of expo...

Aim The Neotropics currently host outstanding levels of species richness, with one‐third of the global tetrapod species. The underlying causes of these extraordinary levels of biodiversity are a topic debated in evolutionary ecology, but the main processes at work remain elusive. Location Neotropics. Time period Cenozoic and Mesozoic. Major taxa studied Tetrapods. Methods Using global phylogenies for amphibians, birds, lepidos...

The comment by Gamisch (2020) draws the attention of users of the R‐package RPANDA (Methods Ecol. Evol., 7, 2016, 589) on situations when properly interpreting the results of linear diversification dependencies requires caution. Here we provide clarifications to help users interpreting their results when using any type of functional diversification dependencies with time or the environment.

Diversification rates vary over time, yet the factors driving these variations remain unclear. Temporal declines in speciation rates have often been interpreted as the effect of ecological limits, competition, and diversity dependence, emphasising the role of biotic factors. Abiotic factors, such as climate change, are also supposed to have affected diversification rates over geological time scales, yet direct tests of these p...

Aim Abiotic factors such as global temperature or continental fragmentation may favour speciation through the ecological and geographical isolation of lineages, but macroevolutionary quantifications of such effect with both fossil and phylogenetic data are rarely performed. Here, we propose to use biogeographical estimations and palaeo‐environmental diversification models to estimate whether and how palaeotemperature and the s...

Aim The aim was to determine processes driving the latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) in New World swallowtail butterfly diversity. We tested three mechanisms commonly invoked to explain the LDG: ecological opportunity, evolutionary rates and biogeographical history. Location New World and Eurasia. Time period Oligocene–Present. Major taxa studied New World swallowtail butterfly clade ( Papilio : Agehana , Alexanoria , Chila...

Karst ecosystems in southern China are species‐rich and have high levels of endemism, yet little is known regarding the evolutionary processes responsible for the origin and diversification of karst biodiversity. The genus Primulina (Gesneriaceae) comprises ca. 170 species endemic to southern China with high levels of ecological (edaphic) specialization, providing an exceptional model to study the plant diversification in kars...

Understanding why species richness peaks along the Andes is a fundamental question in the study of Neotropical biodiversity. Several biogeographic and diversification scenarios have been proposed in the literature, but there is confusion about the processes underlying each scenario, and assessing their relative contribution is not straightforward. Here, we propose to refine these scenarios into a framework which evaluates four...

Aim Understanding the relative contribution of diversification rates (speciation and extinction) and dispersal in the formation of the latitudinal diversity gradient – the decrease in species richness with increasing latitude – is a main goal of biogeography. The mammalian order C arnivora, which comprises 286 species, displays the traditional latitudinal diversity gradient seen in almost all mammalian orders. Yet the processe...

Aim We assessed the influence of past environmental changes, notably the importance of palaeogeographical and climatic drivers, in shaping the distribution patterns of Dipodoidea (Rodentia), the superfamily most closely related to the large species‐rich superfamily Muroidea ( c . 1300–1500 species). Dipodoids are suitable for testing several biogeographical hypotheses because of their disjunct distribution patterns in the Nort...

The study of islands as model systems has played an important role in the development of evolutionary and ecological theory. The 50th anniversary of MacArthur and Wilson's (December 1963) article, ‘An equilibrium theory of insular zoogeography’, was a recent milestone for this theme. Since 1963, island systems have provided new insights into the formation of ecological communities. Here, building on such developments, we highl...

Aim The Mediterranean Basin ( MB ) is a species‐rich biogeographical region with many endemic taxa. We analysed the historical patterns of temporal and geographical diversification of Mediterranean B laps ( T enebrionidae), a diverse group of flightless beetles, estimated their date of origin and colonization of the MB , and tracked temporal changes in diversification rates. Location M editerranean B asin. Methods We reconstru...

Predicting how biodiversity will be affected and will respond to human‐induced environmental changes is one of the most critical challenges facing ecologists today. Here, we put current environmental changes and their effects on biodiversity in a macroevolutionary perspective. We build on research in palaeontology and recent developments in phylogenetic approaches to ask how macroevolution can help us understand how environmen...