Data from: Widespread ecomorphological convergence in multiple fish families spanning the marine–freshwater interface

The theoretical definition and quantification of evolutionary convergence is emerging as an increasingly topical focus in evolutionary research, with particular growing interest in the structural role of convergence as a macroevolutionary mechanism operating across deeper phylogenetic and broader geographic scales. This study utilises a suite of recently developed comparative approaches integrating diverse aspects of morphology, dietary data, habitat affiliation and phylogeny to assess convergence across several well-known tropical-temperate fish families in a percomorph fish suborder (the Terapontoidei), a clade with considerable phenotypic and ecological diversity radiating in both marine and freshwater environments. We demonstrate significant widespread convergence across many lineages occupying equivalent trophic niches (particularly feeding habits such as herbivory and biting of attached prey off hard substrates). These include several examples of convergent morphotypes evolving independently in marine and freshwater clades separated by both tens of millions of years of evolution and also profound marine-freshwater macrohabitat divergences. The Terapontoidei present a new example of the macro-evolutionary dynamics of morphological and ecological co-evolution in relation to habitat and trophic preferences, at a greater phylogenetic and habitat scale than most previously studied adaptive radiations.