The extended ‘common cause’: causal links between punctuated evolution and sedimentary processes

The common-cause hypothesis suggests that the factors that control the availability of the Earth’s sedimentary record may also affect probabilities of speciation and extinction and thus exert macroevolutionary controls on standing biodiversity.  Here I show through computational modeling that common causes may also link sedimentary biases and microevolutionary processes of trait evolution.  Using Gould’s classic “evolutionary microcosm” of Bermuda and its diverse endemic clade of land snails, Poecilozonites, I show that the glacial-interglacial sea level cycles that toggle local sedimentation between rapid eolian accumulation and slow pedogenesis could easily toggle trait evolution between rapid bursts of morphological change driven small effective population size, disruptions in gene flow, and “genetic surfing” expansion events punctuated with long periods of slow morphological evolution associated with geographic range coalescence, large effective population size, and panmixia.  The p..., The data in this archive were generated using computational modeling., , # The extended ‘common cause’: causal links between punctuated evolution and sedimentary processes

P. David Polly, [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.jh9w0vtf4](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.jh9w0vtf4)

The files in these archives contain the method descriptions, code, morphometric semilandmarks, raw output data, and visualized raw output data of the computational modeling of the evolution of Bermudian snails by genetic drift (Brownian motion) in response to change in spatial population structure driven by rising and falling sea level over the last 500,000 years of Earth history. These data underpin the interpretations and conclusions in the accompanying paper and the code and methods allow users to replicate them.

## Description of the data and file structure

**S1 - Extended methods**. This PDF file describes the computational model in more detail, including details about the DEM grid pattern and scale, describes the geometric morphom...