Supplementary information for Paleoceanographic changes in the late Pliocene promoted rapid diversification in pelagic seabirds

Aim: Paleoceanographic changes can act as drivers of diversification and speciation, even in highly mobile marine organisms. Shearwaters are a group of globally distributed and highly mobile pelagic seabirds. Despite a recent well resolved phylogeny, shearwaters have controversial species limits, and show periods of both slow and rapid diversification. Here, we explore the role of paleoceanographic changes on the diversification and speciation in these highly mobile pelagic seabirds. We investigate shearwater biogeography and the evolution of a key phenotypic trait, body size, and we assess the validity of the current taxonomy of the group.

Location: Worldwide.

Taxa: Shearwaters (Order Procellariiformes, Family Procellariidae, Genera Ardenna, Calonectris and Puffinus).

Methods: We generated genomic data (double-digest restriction site-associated DNA) for almost all extant shearwater species to infer a time-calibrated species tree. We estimated ancestral ranges and evaluated the...