Data from: Defense mutualisms enhance plant diversification

The ability of plants to form mutualistic relationships with animal
defenders has long been suspected to influence their evolutionary success,
both by decreasing extinction risk and by increasing opportunity for
speciation through an expanded realized niche. Nonetheless, the hypothesis
that defense mutualisms consistently enhance plant diversification across
lineages has not been well tested due to a lack of phenotypic and
phylogenetic information. Using a global analysis, we show that the
>100 vascular plant families in which species have evolved
extrafloral nectaries (EFNs), sugar-secreting organs that recruit
arthropod mutualists, have twofold higher diversification rates than
families that lack species with EFNs. Zooming in on six distantly related
plant clades, trait-dependent diversification models confirmed the
tendency for lineages with EFNs to display increased rates of
diversification. These results were consistent across methodological
approaches. Inference using reversible-jump Markov chain Monte Carlo
(MCMC) to model the placement and number of rate shifts revealed that high
net diversification rates in EFN clades were driven by an increased number
of positive rate shifts following EFN evolution compared with sister
clades, suggesting that EFNs may be indirect facilitators of
diversification. Our replicated analysis indicates that defense mutualisms
put lineages on a path toward increased diversification rates within and
between clades, and is concordant with the hypothesis that mutualistic
interactions with animals can have an impact on deep macroevolutionary
patterns and enhance plant diversity.