Data from: Phylogenomics, biogeography and morphometrics reveal rapid phenotypic evolution in pythons after crossing Wallace’s line

Ecological opportunities can be provided to organisms that cross stringent
biogeographic barriers towards environments with new ecological niches.
Wallace’s and Lyddeker’s lines are arguably the most famous biogeographic
barriers, separating the Asian and Australo-Papuan biotas. One of the most
ecomorphologically diverse groups of reptiles, the pythons, is distributed
across these lines, and are remarkably more diverse in phenotype and
ecology east of Wallace’s line in Australo-Papua. We used an anchored
hybrid enrichment approach, with near complete taxon sampling, to extract
mitochondrial genomes and 376 nuclear loci to resolve and date their
phylogenetic history. Biogeographic reconstruction demonstrates that they
originated in Asia around 38-45 Ma and then invaded Australo-Papua around
23 Ma. Australo-Papuan pythons display a sizeable expansion in
morphological space, with shifts towards numerous new adaptive optima in
head and body shape, coupled with the evolution of new micro-habitat
preferences. We provide an updated taxonomy of pythons and our study also
demonstrates how ecological opportunity following colonization of novel
environments can promotemorphological diversification in a formerly
ecomorphologically conservative group.