Data from: Hierarchy in adaptive radiation: a case study using the Carnivora (Mammalia)

Simpson’s “early burst” model of adaptive radiation was intended to
explain the early proliferation of morphological and functional variation
in diversifying clades. Yet, despite much empirical testing, questions
remain regarding its frequency across the tree of life. Here, we evaluate
the support for an early burst adaptive radiation in 14 ecomorphological
traits plus body mass for the extant mammalian order Carnivora and its
constituent families. We find strong support for an early burst of
evolution in dental traits, suggesting a classic Simpsonian adaptive
radiation along dietary resource axes. However, the signal of this early
burst is not consistently recovered in analyses at the family level, where
support for a variety of different models emerges. Furthermore, we find no
evidence for early burst–like dynamics in size–related traits, and
Bayesian analyses of evolutionary correlations corroborate a decoupling of
size and dental evolution, driven in part by dietary specialization. Our
results are consistent with the perspective that trait diversification
unfolds hierarchically, with early bursts restricted to traits associated
with higher level niches, such as macrohabitat use and dietary strategy,
and thus with the origins of higher taxa. The lack of support for early
burst adaptive radiation in previous phylogenetic studies may be a
consequence of focusing on low-level niche traits (i.e., those associated
with microhabitat use) in clades at shallow phylogenetic levels. A richer
understanding of early burst adaptive radiation will require a renewed
focus on functional traits and their evolution over higher-level clades.