Adaptive radiations are typically triggered when a lineage encounters a significant range of open niche space (ecological opportunity), stemming from colonisation of new areas, extinction of competitors or key innovations. The most well‐known of these is the colonisation of new areas, through either dispersal into new regions or the invasion of novel ecological regimes. One aspect of ecological opportunity that has rarely been...

Aim We examine diversification in Caribbean alsophiine snakes and hypothesize that, given the ecological opportunity presented by colonization of the West Indies, alsophiines should show the signature of an early burst of diversification and associated low within‐clade ecological and morphological disparification. We also test whether changes in morphology and ecology are associated with changes in diversification rate, as tra...