A global phylogeny of turtles reveals a burst of climate-associated diversification on continental margins.

ABSTRACT: Living turtles are characterized by extraordinarily low species diversity given their age. The clade's extensive fossil record indicates that climate and biogeography may have played important roles in determining their diversity. We investigated this hypothesis by collecting a molecular dataset for 591 individual turtles that, together, represent 80% of all turtle species, including representatives of all families and 98% of genera, and used it to jointly estimate phylogeny and divergence times. We found that the turtle tree is characterized by relatively constant diversification (speciation minus extinction) punctuated by a single threefold increase. We also found that this shift is temporally and geographically associated with newly emerged continental margins that appeared during the E

SUBMITTER: Thomson RC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7896334 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature