Chameleon biogeographic dispersal associated with extreme life history strategies

This dataset contains data and code that support the results in Weil, S.-S., Gallien, L., Lavergne, S., Börger, L., Hassler, G., Nicolaï, Michaël P. J., Allen, William L. (2022) Chameleon biogeographic dispersal associated with extreme life history strategies (DOI: 10.1111/ecog.06323).

We used species distribution, phylogenetic and life history trait data of 181 chameleons to determine the relationship between three traits (coastal distribution, body size, position on the fast/slow life history continuum) and past dispersal probability on an evolutionary timescale using trait-dependent biogeographic models.

We found that all three traits were associated with past biogeographical movements. Lineages having coastal distributions and those with large bodies had higher dispersal probabilities. Interestingly, chameleons with either very fast or very slow life history were more successful dispersers than species with an intermediate strategy. Together, the three traits “coastal, large-bodied and extreme life history” form a dispersal syndrome.

Methods
We used species distribution data from IUCN (2019) to create 9 biogeographic regions and to extract species' occurrences in these 9 regions. Phylogenetic data was taken from Tonini et al.’s (2017) squamate consensus tree. We collected trait data from various sources (Allen et al. 2017, Glaw and Vences 2007, Hughes and Blackburn 2020, Meiri 2018, Nečas 1999, Tilbury 2010) and performed a phylogenetic factor analysis (https://gabehassler.github.io/PhylogeneticFactorAnalysis.jl/stable/) to extract body size and body size independent life history factors.