Evolution of fungal phenotypic disparity

Organismal grade multicellularity has been achieved only in animals, plants, and fungi. All three kingdoms manifest phenotypically disparate body plans, but their evolution has only been considered in detail for animals. Here we seek to test the general relevance of hypotheses on the evolution of animal body plans by characterising the evolution of fungal phenotypic variety (disparity). The distribution of living fungal form is defined by four distinct morphotypes: flagellated, zygomycetous, sac-bearing, and club-bearing. The discontinuity between morphotypes is a consequence of the extinction of phylogenetic intermediates, indicating that a complete record of fungal disparity would present a much more homogeneous distribution of form. Fungal phenotypic variety gradually expands through time for the most part but sharply increases with the emergence of multicellular body plans. Simulations show these temporal trends to be decidedly non-random, and at least partially shaped by hierarchic..., See linked manuscript. , Follow ReadMe files for explanation. , # Data from: Evolution of fungal phenotypic disparity

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.wwpzgmsm9](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.wwpzgmsm9)

## Description of the data and file structure

Data from: Evolution of fungal phenotypic disparity

Thomas J. Smith & Philip C. J. Donoghue (2022), Nature Ecology & Evolution, DOI: 10.1038/s41559-022-01844-6.
### Files and variables

#### File: PCA\_versus\_NMDS.zip

**Description:** Contains results of Spearman's Rank Correlation Tests between principal coordinate and non-metric multidimensional scaling for

different numbers of principal coordinate axes. Results provided for analyses conduct on ordinations of complete dataset,

subcellular dataset, and supracellular dataset.SR = sum of rages, AEDC = average Euclidean distance from centroid, SV = sum of variances,

ANNED = average nearest neighbour Euclidean distance, AMSTED = average minimum spanning tree Euclidean distance,

p = p value, coeff = Spearman's rank correlation coefficient.

#### Fil...