Understanding drivers of animal biodiversity has been a longstanding aim in evolutionary biology. Insects and fishes represent the largest lineages of invertebrates and vertebrates respectively, and consequently many ideas have been proposed to explain this diversity. Natural enemy interactions are often important in diversification dynamics, and key traits that mediate such interactions may therefore have an important role in explaining organismal diversity. Venom is one such trait which is intricately bound in antagonistic coevolution and has recently been shown to be associated with increased diversification rates in tetrapods. Despite ~ 10% of fish families and ~ 16% of insect families containing venomous species, the role that venom may play in these two superradiations remains unknown.
In this paper we take a broad family-level phylogenetic perspective and show that variation in diversification rates are the main cause of variations in species richness in both insects and fishes, and that venomous families have diversification rates twice as high as non-venomous families. Furthermore, we estimate that venom was present in ~ 10% and ~ 14% of the evolutionary history of fishes and insects respectively.
Consequently, we provide evidence that venom has played a role in generating the remarkable diversity in the largest vertebrate and invertebrate radiations.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 116. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 10 February 2023.
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#2
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Altmetric has tracked 34,518,784 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,627 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.5. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 38 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its contemporaries.
