Data from: Accelerated diversification explains the exceptional species richness of tropical characoid fishes

The Neotropics harbor the most species-rich freshwater fish fauna on the
planet, but the timing of that exceptional diversification
remains unclear. Did the Neotropics accumulate species steadily throughout
their long history, or attain their remarkable diversity
recently? Biologists have long debated the relative support for these
museum and cradle hypotheses, but few phylogenies of megadiverse
tropical clades have included sufficient taxa to distinguish between them.
We used 1288 ultraconserved element loci spanning 293 species,
211 genera, and 21 families of characoid fishes to reconstruct a
new, fossil-calibrated phylogeny and infer the most likely
diversification scenario for a clade that includes a third of
Neotropical fish diversity. This phylogeny implies paraphyly of
the traditional delimitation of Characiformes because it resolves
the largely Neotropical Characoidei as the sister lineage of
Siluriformes (catfishes), rather than the African Citharinodei.
Time-calibrated phylogenies indicate an ancient origin of major
characoid lineages and reveal a much more recent emergence
of most characoid species. Diversification rate analyses infer
increased speciation and decreased extinction rates during
the Oligocene at around 30 Ma during a period of mega-wetland
formation in the proto-Orinoco-Amazonas. Three species rich and
ecomorphologically diverse lineages (Anostomidae, Serrasalmidae, and
Characidae) that originated more than 60 Ma in the Paleocene
experienced particularly notable bursts of Oligocene diversification and
now account collectively for 68% of the approximately 2150
species of Characoidei. In addition to paleogeographic changes, we discuss
potential accelerants of diversification in these three lineages.
While the Neotropics accumulated a museum of
ecomorphologically diverse characoid lineages long ago, this
geologically dynamic region also cradled a much more recent birth of
remarkable species-level diversity.