Data from: Rates of speciation and morphological evolution are correlated across the largest vertebrate radiation

Several evolutionary theories predict that rates of morphological change
should be positively associated with the rate at which new species arise.
For example, the theory of punctuated equilibrium proposes that phenotypic
change typically occurs in rapid bursts associated with speciation events.
However, recent phylogenetic studies have found little evidence linking
these processes in nature. Here we demonstrate that rates of species
diversification are highly correlated with the rate of body size evolution
across the 30,000+ living species of ray-finned fish that comprise the
majority of vertebrate biological diversity. This coupling is a general
feature of fish evolution and transcends vast differences in ecology and
body-plan organization. Our results may reflect a widespread speciational
mode of character change in living fishes. Alternatively, these findings
are consistent with the hypothesis that phenotypic ‘evolvability’ – the
capacity of organisms to evolve – shapes the dynamics of speciation
through time at the largest phylogenetic scales.