Dated tree of 24,000 Angiosperms species incl Canary Island colonisation events

Insular woodiness (IW), referring to the evolutionary transition from herbaceousness towards woodiness on islands, has arisen more than 30 times on the Canary Islands (Atlantic Ocean). One of the IW hypotheses suggests that drought has been a major driver of wood formation, but we do not know in which palaeoclimatic conditions the insular woody lineages originated. Therefore, we provided an updated review on the presence of IW on the Canaries, reconstructed the palaeoclimate, and estimated the timing of origin of woodiness of 24 insular woody lineages that represent a large majority of the insular woody species diversity on the Canaries. Our single, broad-scale dating analysis shows that woodiness in 60-65% of the insular woody lineages studied originated within the last 3.2 Myr during which Mediterranean seasonality (yearly summer droughts) became established on the Canaries. Consequently, our results are consistent with palaeoclimatic aridification as a potential driver of woodiness i...