Data from: Evolutionary origin of the Scombridae (tunas and mackerels): members of a Paleogene adaptive radiation with 14 other pelagic fish families

Uncertainties surrounding the evolutionary origin of the epipelagic fish
family Scombridae (tunas and mackerels) are symptomatic of the
difficulties in resolving suprafamilial relationships within Percomorpha,
a hyperdiverse teleost radiation that contains approximately 17,000
species placed in 13 ill-defined orders and 269 families. Here we find
that scombrids share a common ancestry with 14 families based on (i)
bioinformatic analyses using partial mitochondrial and nuclear gene
sequences from all percomorphs deposited in GenBank (10,733 sequences) and
(ii) subsequent mitogenomic analysis based on 57 species from those
targeted 15 families and 67 outgroup taxa. Morphological heterogeneity
among these 15 families is so extraordinary that they have been placed in
six different perciform suborders. However, members of the 15 families are
either coastal or oceanic pelagic in their ecology with diverse modes of
life, suggesting that they represent a previously undetected adaptive
radiation in the pelagic realm. Time-calibrated phylogenies imply that
scombrids originated from a deep-ocean ancestor and began to radiate after
the end-Cretaceous when large predatory epipelagic fishes were selective
victims of the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction. We name this clade of
open-ocean fishes containing Scombridae “Pelagia” in reference to the
common habitat preference that links the 15 families.