Punctuated versus gradual shifts in the multivariate evolutionary process: a test with paired radiations of scincid lizards

As lineages become separated in time, they are expected to accumulate mutational (or developmental-genetic) differences that influence the macroevolutionary trajectories of those lineages even under similar environmental conditions. Here, we compare the dynamics of phenotypic evolution in radiations of scincid lizards from Australia and Madagascar that are separated by more than 100 million years of independent evolution and show rampant phenotypic parallelism. We collected linear measurements of the skull, limbs, and limb girdles from micro-CT scans of 94 Australian and 29 Malagasy species. Using multivariate comparative methods, we tested whether the underlying evolutionary covariance structure for this superficial parallelism was conserved and whether these patterns were consistent across distinct functional modules. Malagasy and most Australian skinks have similar covariance matrices for skull evolution. Results are ambiguous for limbs and limb girdles, as some trait subsets support different evolutionary processes and for other subsets, a shared covariance matrix could not be rejected. However, across most trait sets, the extremely speciose Australian genus Ctenotus exhibits a radically different covariance structure from all other lizards in these groups, including several closely related genera. The shift in Ctenotus demonstrates that the architecture of trait correlations can change at relatively shallow timescales and may explain the unique position of this clade in morphospace relative to other scincid lizards from both geographic regions. More generally, our results demonstrate that the multivariate evolutionary process can change dramatically in a relatively short period of time.