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Data from: A phylogenetic perspective on habitat shifts and diversity in the North American Enallagma damselflies

Cite this dataset

Brown, Jonathan M.; McPeek, Mark A.; May, Michael L. (2009). Data from: A phylogenetic perspective on habitat shifts and diversity in the North American Enallagma damselflies [Dataset]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.603

Abstract

Community ecologists are increasingly aware that the regional history of taxon diversification can have an important influence on community structure. Likewise, systematists recognize that ecological context can have an important influence on the processes of speciation and extinction that create patterns of descent. We present a phylogenetic analysis of 33 species of a North American radiation of damselflies (Zygoptera: Coenagrionidae: Enallagma Selys), which have been well-studied ecologically, in order to elucidate the evolutionary mechanisms that have contributed to differences in diversity between larval habitats (lakes with and without fish predators). Analysis of molecular variation in 842 bp of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I and II subunit and the intervening Leu-tRNA and 37 morphological characters resulted in three well-defined clades that are only partially congruent with previous phylogenetic hypotheses. Molecular and morphological data partitions were significantly incongruent. Lack of haplotype monophyly within species and small levels of sequence divergence (<1%) between related species in 3 of the 4 clades suggests that recent, and parallel, speciation has been an important source of community diversity. Reconstruction of habitat preference over the phylogeny suggests that the greater species diversity in fish-lake habitats is due to the recency of shifts into the fishless-lake habit, although a difference in speciation or extinction rates between the two habitats is difficult to exclude as an additional mechanism.

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