Data from: Testing the role of the Red Queen and Court Jester as drivers of the macroevolution of Apollo butterflies

In macroevolution, the Red Queen (RQ) model posits that biodiversity
dynamics depend mainly on species-intrinsic biotic factors such as
interactions among species or life-history traits, while the Court Jester
(CJ) model states that extrinsic environmental abiotic factors have a
stronger role. Until recently, a lack of relevant methodological
approaches has prevented the unraveling of contributions from these two
types of factors to the evolutionary history of a lineage. Here we take
advantage of the rapid development of new macroevolution models that tie
diversification rates to changes in paleoenvironmental (extrinsic) and/or
biotic (intrinsic) factors. We inferred a robust and fully-sampled
species-level phylogeny, as well as divergence times and ancestral
geographic ranges, and related these to the radiation of Apollo
butterflies (Parnassiinae) using both extant (molecular) and extinct
(fossil/morphological) evidence. We tested whether their diversification
dynamics are better explained by a RQ or CJ hypothesis, by assessing
whether speciation and extinction were mediated by diversity-dependence
(niche filling) and clade-dependent host-plant association (RQ) or by
large-scale continuous changes in extrinsic factors such as climate or
geology (CJ). For the RQ hypothesis, we found significant differences in
speciation rates associated with different host-plants but detected no
sign of diversity-dependence. For CJ, the role of Himalayan-Tibetan
building was substantial for biogeography but not a driver of high
speciation, while positive dependence between warm climate and
speciation/extinction was supported by continuously varying
maximum-likelihood models. We find that rather than a single factor, the
joint effect of multiple factors (biogeography, species traits,
environmental drivers, and mass extinction) is responsible for current
diversity patterns, and that the same factor might act differently across
clades, emphasizing the notion of opportunity. This study confirms the
importance of the confluence of several factors rather than single
explanations in modeling diversification within lineages.