The proximate and ultimate mechanisms underlying scaling relationships as well as their evolutionary consequences remain an enigmatic issue in evolutionary biology. Here I investigate the evolution of wing allometries in the Schizophora, a group of higher Diptera that radiated ~65 million years ago, by studying static allometries in five species using multivariate approaches. Despite the vast ecological diversity observed in contemporary members of the Schizophora and independent evolutionary histories throughout most of the Cenozoic, size-related changes represent a major contributor to overall variation in wing shape, both within and among species. Static allometries differ between species and sexes, yet allometric changes are correlated across species, suggesting a shared program underlying size-dependent developmental plasticity. Lastly, static allometries within species also correlate with evolutionary divergence across 33 different families (belonging to 11 of 13 superfamilies) of the Schizophora. This again points towards a general developmental, genetic, or evolutionary mechanism that canalizes or maintains the covariation between shape and size in spite of rapid ecological and morphological diversification during the Cenozoic. I discuss the putative roles of developmental constraints and natural selection in the evolution of wing allometry in the Schizophora.

This is a two-dimensional geometric morphometric dataset. Information on wing landmark acquisition are found in the respective publication. Centroid size is reported in unit millimeter. Two-dimensionsal Procrustes-transformed coordinates are given (one x- and one y-coordinate for each of the eight landmarks). An illustration on the second sheet of the excel file shows the placement of the respective landmark on a sketch of a wing.