Data for: Climatic-niche breadth, niche position, and speciation in lizards and snakes

Aim: The climatic niche is associated with diversification in many groups of animals and plants. However, the relationships between climatic-niche breadth evolution, climatic-niche position evolution, and speciation remain underexplored. It is particularly unclear whether changes in climatic-niche breadth are related to diversification. We tested two hypotheses relating niche breadth, niche position, and speciation using climatic data in Squamata (lizards and snakes), one of the largest radiations of tetrapods. These hypotheses were: (1) the oscillation hypothesis (niche breadth changes along with niche position and speciation); and (2) the musical chairs hypothesis (niche breadth remains relatively constant when niche position changes during speciation).
Location: Global.
Taxon: Squamata (lizards and snakes).
Methods: We estimated rates of speciation and evolutionary rates for both climatic-niche position and climatic-niche breadth for 5,320 squamate species. We tested relationships am..., Climatic-niche data
We obtained historic climatic data and distribution maps for 5,320 squamate species. We calculated two characteristics of the realized climatic niche for each species: niche position and niche breadth. For niche position, we performed a phylogenetic principal component analysis (pPCA) and focused on the first two axes: PC1 and PC2. For niche breadth we calculated two distinct but complementary metrics: species niche breadth for temperature (SNBT) and species niche breadth for precipitation (SNBP).
Speciation rates
We estimated species-specific speciation rates (and rates of climatic-niche evolution) for all 5,320 species of Squamata included in the tree. We estimated speciation rates (λ) using the ClaDS approach.
Rates of climatic-niche evolution
We used BAMM to infer the evolutionary rates (r) for changes in species’ climatic-niche position (PC1 and PC2) and climatic-niche breadth (SNBT and SNBP) on the final tree. We then calculated pathwise rates of evolution (∑r)..., , # Data for: Climatic-niche breadth, niche position, and speciation in lizards and snakes

[Access this dataset on Dryad](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.f4qrfj72v)

## Description of the data and file structure

This README file was generated on 29-01-2024 by Matthew Moreira.

### GENERAL INFORMATION

1\. Title of Dataset

Data for: Climatic-niche breadth, niche position, and speciation in lizards and snakes

2\. Author Information

A. Name: Matthew Owen Moreira
Institution: University of Aveiro
Address: Aveiro, Portugal
Email:

B. Name: John J. Wiens
Institution: University of Arizona
Address: Tucson, AR USA
Email:

C. Name: Carlos Fonseca
Institution: ForestWISE
Address: Vila Real, Portugal
Email:

D. Name: Danny Rojas
Institution: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Cali
Address: Cali, Colombia
Email:

3\. Date of data collection (single date, range, approximate date): 2021-2023

4\. Geographic location of data collection: None

5\. Information about funding sources that supported the...