Data from: The little fishes that could: smaller fishes demonstrate slow body size evolution but faster speciation in the family Percidae

Body size impacts numerous aspects of organismal biology and many factors
have been invoked to explain body size distributions in a macroecological
and macroevolutionary context. Body size in the freshwater fish family
Percidae is strongly right-skewed (i.e, dominated by small sizes), with
small body size potentially being associated with fast water habitats. We
constructed a new species-level, multi-locus, time-calibrated phylogeny of
Percidae, and used it to test for changes in the rate and pattern of
maximum body size evolution. We also tested whether speciation rates
varied as a function of body size. We found that Etheostomatinae evolved
towards a smaller adaptive optimum in body size compared to the other
subfamilies of Percidae, and that this shift was associated with a
reduction in the rate of body size evolution. Speciation rates were
associated with body size across percids, showing a peak around small to
medium body size. Small body size appears to partially, but not fully,
explain the diversity of small percids, as many darters fall well below
the “optimum” body size. Reinforcement of selection for small body size
via selection for novel morphologies or via sexual selection may help to
fully explain the remarkable diversity of the darter radiation.