Evolutionary radiation strategy revealed in the Scarabaeidae with evidence of continuous spatiotemporal morphology and phylogenesis

Evolutionary biology faces the important challenge of determining how to interpret the relationship between selection pressures and evolutionary radiation. The lack of morphological evidence on cross-species research adds to difficulty of this challenge.
We proposed a new paradigm for evaluating the evolution of branches through changes in characters on continuous spatiotemporal scales, for better interpreting the impact of biotic/abiotic drivers on the evolutionary radiation. It reveals a causal link between morphological changes and selective pressures: consistent deformation signals for all tested characters on timeline, which provided strong support for the evolutionary hypothesis of relationship between scarabs and biotic/abiotic drivers; the evolutionary strategies under niche differentiation, which were manifested in the responsiveness degree of functional morphological characters with different selection pressure.
This morphological information-driven integrative approach sheds ..., Four homologous traits of scarabs under various selection pressures were chosen: the mandible and hindwing are related to the feeding and migration of scarabs and have been corroborated to be associated with the development of diversity, and the pronotum and elytron, regarded as important parts of the scarabs’ body, are closely related to the muscular system associated with digging and movement ability.
This study was based on three datasets, which included 9,332 specimens of 5,900 species for the testing of the pronotum and elytron, 250 specimens of 216 species for the mandible, and 263 specimens of 238 species for the hindwing. Most of the specimens were deposited in the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Natural History Museum London. Additional photographs of species were taken from the literatures. The specimens were examined and dissected using a LEICA MZ 12.5 dissecting microscope, and all the photographs were taken using an Olympus EM5 (60mm) camera. Stan..., , # Data from: Evolutionary radiation strategy revealed in the Scarabaeidae with evidence of continuous spatiotemporal morphology and phylogenesis

## Description of the Data and file structure

We proposed a new paradigm for evaluating the evolution of branches through changes in characters on continuous spatiotemporal scales, for better interpreting the impact of biotic/abiotic drivers on the evolutionary radiation. Four homologous traits of scarabs under various selection pressures were chosen: the mandible and hindwing are related to the feeding and migration of scarabs and have been corroborated to be associated with the development of diversity, and the pronotum and elytron, regarded as important parts of the scarabs' body, are closely related to the muscular system associated with digging and movement ability. It reveals a causal link between morphological changes and selective pressures: consistent deformation signals for all tested characters on timeline, which provided strong su...