Data from: Macroevolutionary divergence along allometric lines of least resistance in frog hindlimb traits and its effect on locomotor evolution

Understanding whether and why microevolutionary patterns of trait
covariation match macroevolutionary divergence is essential for linking
evolution at different timescales. However, recent work has focused on
developmental constraints for alignment between intraspecific variation
and divergence, neglecting a potential role of natural selection on
function to connect these scales. Here, we compare the support for the
selection and constraint hypotheses to explain both phenotypic trait
covariation and species divergence. To test these hypotheses, we collected
data on hindlimb and jumping performance traits within and across species
of two frog genera. We compared patterns of within-species phenotypic
variation (the P-matrix) with divergence and selective covariance
matrices, from which we could extract the major axes of the realized
adaptive landscape (AL), the directions in which adaptive peaks shifted
the most over evolutionary time. We also tested whether the major axes of
the AL were related to selection on jumping performance. We found high
alignment between patterns of variation across scales. Most divergence
occurred in allometric size, defined as the first eigenvector of the
P-matrix. However, jumping performance gradients were unaligned with the
major axes of the AL and the P-matrix. Across species, however, evolution
of maximum acceleration showed a strong negative relationship with changes
in allometric size. We infer that the jumping peak evolved under
fluctuating selection, and species have tracked the peak along the
direction of most within-species variation, allometric size. We conclude
that long-term hindlimb divergence was constrained by developmental
interactions among traits associated with growth and not net directional
selection. Nonetheless, divergence on size indirectly influenced jumping
evolution.