Alternative pathways to diversity across ecologically distinct lizard radiations

Aim: Lizard assemblages vary greatly in taxonomic, ecological and phenotypic diversity, yet the mechanisms that generate and maintain these patterns at a macroecological scale are not well understood. We aimed to characterize the ecological and environmental drivers of species richness patterns in the context of macroecological theory for ten independent lizard radiations.
Location: Global
Time Period: Present-day
Major taxa: Lizards
Methods: We analyzed patterns of species and ecological trait diversity in ten ecologically distinct and widely distributed clades encompassing nearly all known lizard species. Using recently published spatial, phylogenetic, and ecological trait datasets, we built spatially explicit structural equation models to ask whether species diversity was directly or indirectly related to functional divergence or convergence within communities, and with features of the environment, including measures of productivity, complexity, and harshness.
Results: Our results sh...