Macroevolution along developmental lines of least resistance

A reigning paradigm in biology is that short-term evolution can be predicted from measures of genetic variation within populations, but that the accuracy of such predictions should decay with time. Here, we show that intrinsic developmental variability and standing genetic variation in wing shape of the two flies, Drosophila melanogaster and Sepsis punctum, are tightly aligned and predict deep divergence in the dipteran phylogeny, spanning >900 taxa and 185 My of evolution. This finding is hard to reconcile with constraint hypotheses invoking a lack of genetic variation as the reason for slow-evolving wing traits unless most of the observed variability is associated with deleterious side effects and effectively unusable for evolution. However, phenotyping of 71 genetic lines of S. punctum revealed no association between variation in wing shape and fitness correlates unrelated to flight, lending no credence to this hypothesis. We also find no evidence for genetic constraints on the pa..., Quantifying wing shape and divergence across fly taxa 
We focus on the evolution of wing shape within the Eremoneura, a clade within the Brachycera characterized by the presence of three larval instars. This clade is about 185 million years old and includes the dance and long-legged flies (Empidoidea) as well as the Cyclorrhapha (flies that pupate within the cuticle of the last larval instar (i.e., the puparium)).
To quantify the morphological variation within and between families, we took advantage of illustrations and pictures of fly wings from the taxonomic and systematic literature. An initial data set was sourced from the Manuals of Nearctic Diptera and the Manuals of Afrotropical Diptera . We focused on those families that are represented in the phylogenetic hypothesis generated by Bayless et al.. Additional pictures and illustrations were collected from a wide range of publications.
We only included observations where the location of all 11 two-dimensional landmarks used in Rohne..., , # **Data from: Macroevolution along developmental lines of least resistance**

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.08kprr599](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.08kprr599)

## Description of the data and file structure

This dataset contains three files. One file contains all wing shape coordinates that were sourced from the literature. The second file contains wing shape information used to compare shape data sourced from the literature to those generated from pictures. The third file contains average wing shape data and best linear unbiased predictors (BLUPs) for five different fitness components. Missing data is indicated with \"NA\". Each file contains a separate sheet with a more detailed variable description.

#### Description of variables in DRYAD\_all\_shape\_data.xlsx

| variable | description |
| :------- | :------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| ID | unique numerical identifier ...