Data from: The evolutionary history of dragon lizards (Squamata: Agamidae) revealed by phylogenomics

Dragon lizards (Squamata: Agamidae) are a species-rich, ecologically and
morphologically diverse group that is broadly distributed across the
eastern hemisphere. Here, we present a phylogenomic study of this major
clade of lizards to elucidate their biogeographic history, understand how
dispersal and vicariance generated modern species distributions, and
examine whether ecological opportunities encountered during agamid
evolutionary history shaped speciation rates. We generated genome-wide
sequence data for 42 species representing 40 genera to infer the
evolutionary relationships and timescale of dragon lizards. The phylogeny
was largely concordant across several different types of genetic loci, but
rapidly evolving long exons had better support values across gene and
species trees compared to other datasets. We also inferred a supermatrix
tree and timetree for 433 (72% of described species) species to perform
taxonomically well-sampled biogeographic and macroevolutionary analyses.
These analyses inferred that agamids originated during the Late Cretaceous
and in Laurasia, and that Southeast Asia has been a major source of agamid
diversity. Rate analyses found that neither individual biogeographic and
cladogenetic events nor ecological opportunities appear to have resulted
in structured variation in speciation rates when considering all agamid
lizards. Our study refutes supercontinental vicariance as a driving
mechanism for speciation in Agamidae and provides a case of a broadly
distributed and diverse clade with weak evidence for variation in
speciation rates.