Data from: dispersal sweepstakes: biotic interchange propelled air-breathing fishes across the globe

Synbranchiformes is a phenotypically diverse and species rich clade of
freshwater acanthomorph fishes, which include eel- and perch-like,
air-breathing and non-air-breathing fishes. The ability to breathe out of
water has presumably aided lineages of Synbranchiformes in dispersing
across all southern continents except Antarctica. The lack of a
well-resolved, time-calibrated phylogeny of Synbranchiformes limits our
understanding of the timing and geographic patterns of diversification of
these anatomically and ecologically diverse fishes. As a consequence,
contemporary interpretations of synbranchiform biogeography invoke
scenarios as disparate as Gondwana vicariance and pan-global rafting to
explain their modern-day geographic distribution. In this study, we use
high-throughput sequencing of ultra-conserved elements (UCEs) to infer a
phylogeny for all major synbranchiform lineages. We combine this dataset
with existing Sanger sequenced genes and fossil calibrations to infer a
comprehensive time-calibrated phylogeny of Synbranchiformes. Then, we use
Bayesian methods of biogeographical reconstruction to document the history
of dispersal of synbranchiforms, finding support for Southeast Asia as the
likely ancestral area of all major lineages. Our results reject the
hypothesis of Gondwanan vicariance explaining synbranchiform biogeography,
and instead the historical biogeographic analyses support a hypothesis of
independent continental invasions by snakeheads, anabantids, and spiny
eels. However, there is no signal of elevated lineage diversification
rates after these invasions. Instead, higher rates of lineage
diversification in spiny eels pre-dates their arrival to Africa, while the
high levels of lineage diversification observed in Betta were
initiated prior to the flooding of insular Sundaland in SE Asia.