Data from: Ecological and spatial overlap indicate interspecific competition during North American canid radiation

Understanding biodiversity patterns and the processes that generate them
are key goals in macroevolutionary studies. Diversity-dependent models of
diversification have been used to indirectly infer the relevance of
interspecific competition on diversification dynamics. In this study, we
develop a new approach that more explicitly incorporates spatial and
eco-morphological overlap among species to test how interspecific
competition may affect diversification dynamics in deep time. We build
different metrics that capture temporal and spatial coexistence, and
ecological overlap to test the hypothesis that an increase in the
intensity of competition would result in a decrease in speciation and an
increase in extinction rate. We test our predictions using the fossil
record of North American canids, a group that has been extensively studied
and well characterized both ecologically and from a paleontological point
of view. We find that interspecific competition only affected
diversification dynamics during the early stages of the radiation of
canids, resulting in the suppression of speciation rate at the time the
clade was expanding in diversity. We find no association between the
intensity of the competition and extinction dynamics, nor an association
between changes in diversification dynamics and temperature changes. We
discuss the relevance of different factors in driving diversification
dynamics changes over time and how evaluating the role of interspecific
competition using different metrics that better capture the intensity of
competition (as opposed to diversity-dependent models) might be a way
forward to investigate the role of biotic interactions at deep time.