Widespread sympatry in a species-rich clade of marine fishes (Carangoidei)

A universal paradigm describing patterns of speciation across the tree of life has been debated for decades. In marine organisms, patterns of speciation are largely unknown due to the deficiency of species-level phylogenies and information on species’ distributions, as well as conflicting relationships between species’ dispersal, range size and co-occurrence. Most research on global patterns of marine fish speciation has focused on coral reef or pelagic species. Carangoidei is an ecologically important clade of marine fishes that utilize both coral reef and pelagic environments. We used sequence capture of 1314 ultraconserved elements (UCEs) from 154 taxa to generate a phylogeny of Carangoidei and its parent clade, Carangiformes. Age-range correlation analyses of the geographic distributions and divergence times of sister species pairs reveal widespread sympatry, with 73% of sister species pairs exhibiting a sympatric geographic distribution, regardless of node age, and most species pai...