Coincident transitions across elevation and origins of functional innovations drove the phenotypic and ecological diversity of lungless salamanders

Ecological opportunity (EO) is an important catalyst for evolution. Whereas theory often centers around a lineage encountering a source of EO in isolation, in practice, they experience numerous sources of opportunity, either concurrently or sequentially. Such multiplicity can obscure the macroevolutionary signature of EO. Here, we test the effects of elevation (a proxy of the “mountain effect”) and an array of functional innovations on the evolutionary history of plethodontid salamanders, a diverse and charismatic radiation of lungless amphibians. Functional innovations unlock access to novel microhabitats, ultimately enabling sub-lineages to occupy a diverse range of ecological niches, particularly in lowland areas where those niches are more abundant. Consistent with expanded ecological opportunity, such transitions to lower elevation result in rapid phenotypic evolution. At high elevation, by contrast, rates of phenotypic evolution and phenotypic disparity decline, reflecting a loss ..., , # Data from: Coincident transitions across elevation and origins of functional innovations drove the phenotypic and ecological diversity of lungless salamanders

Authors: Edward D. Burress, Meaghan Gade, Eric A. Riddell, and Martha M. Munoz

correspondence: Edward D. Burress; [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])

**The associated Dryad repository contains five files (one on Dryad; four on Zenodo)**

(1) A .csv file (Burress_et_al_supporting_data.csv) that contains the supporting data used for the analyses in the manuscript

This file contains 13 columns. Column abbreviations are as follows: species names (x), snout-vent length (SVL), snout length (SnL), head length (HL), body width (BW), forelimb length (FLL), hindlimb length (HLL), tail length (TL), mean elevation (ln_elevation_mean), median elevation (ln_elevation_midpoint), microhabitat designation (microhabitat), alternative microhabitat designation (alternative_microhabitat), and notes (notes).

All numerical values are spec...,