Phylogenomics, biogeography and morphometrics reveal rapid phenotypic evolution in pythons after crossing Wallace’s line

Ecological opportunities can be provided to organisms that cross stringent biogeographic barriers towards environments with new ecological niches. Wallace’s and Lyddeker’s lines are arguably the most famous biogeographic barriers, separating the Asian and Australo-Papuan biotas. One of the most ecomorphologically diverse groups of reptiles, the pythons, is distributed across these lines, and are remarkably more diverse in phenotype and ecology east of Wallace’s line in Australo-Papua. We used an anchored hybrid enrichment approach, with near complete taxon sampling, to extract mitochondrial genomes and 376 nuclear loci to resolve and date their phylogenetic history. Biogeographic reconstruction demonstrates that they originated in Asia around 38-45 Ma and then invaded Australo-Papua around 23 Ma. Australo-Papuan pythons display a sizeable expansion in morphological space, with shifts towards numerous new adaptive optima in head and body shape, coupled with the evolution of new micro-hab...跨越严苛生物地理屏障（biogeographic barrier）、进驻拥有全新生态位（ecological niche）的环境的生物，可获得生态机遇。华莱士线（Wallace's Line）与莱德克线（Lyddeker's Line）堪称最知名的生物地理屏障，分隔了亚洲与澳巴布亚生物区系。作为生态形态多样性最为突出的爬行动物类群之一，蟒类（pythons）的分布横跨上述两条屏障，且在华莱士线以东的澳巴布亚地区，其表型与生态多样性显著更高。本研究采用锚定杂交富集（anchored hybrid enrichment）技术，并结合近乎全面的类群采样，获取了线粒体基因组（mitochondrial genome）与376个核基因座（nuclear loci）的数据，以解析并标定其系统发育历史（phylogenetic history）。生物地理重建结果显示，蟒类起源于约3800万至4500万年前的亚洲，并于约2300万年前入侵澳巴布亚地区。澳巴布亚地区的蟒类在形态空间上呈现显著扩张，其头部与躯体形态向着诸多全新的适应性最优态演化，同时伴随着新型微生境...