Data from: Niche shifts after island colonization spurred adaptive diversification and speciation in a cosmopolitan bird clade

Islands have long been recognized as key contributors to biodiversity
because islands facilitate geographic isolation and ecological divergence
from mainland ancestors. However, island colonization has traditionally
been considered an evolutionary dead-end process, and its consequences for
continental biodiversity remain understudied. Here, we studied the
evolutionary radiation of Columbiformes (i.e. pigeons and doves) to
examine if ecological niche shifts on islands shaped biological
diversification and community composition on continents. We show that the
colonization of islands by continental, terrestrial-foraging lineages led
to exploitation of a new ecological niche (i.e. arboreal foraging). This
transition towards arboreal foraging was associated with evolutionary
adaptation towards a new morphological optimum. In addition,
arboreal-foraging lineages experienced an increase in speciation rates,
which was associated with successful range expansions to other islands as
well as back-colonization of continents. Our results provide empirical
evidence that diversification on continents can only be fully understood
when studying the diversification processes that took place on islands,
challenging the view of islands as mere sinks of evolutionary diversity.