Rise of the spiny ants: diversification, ecology and function of extreme traits in the hyperdiverse genus Pheidole (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Adaptive radiation refers to diversification from an ancestral species that produces descendants adapted to use a great variety of distinct ecological niches. In this review, I examine two aspects of adaptive radiation: first, that it results from ecological opportunity and, second, that it is deterministic in terms of its outcome and evolutionary trajectory. Ecological opportunity is usually a prerequisite for adaptive radiation, although in some cases, radiation can occur in the absence of preexisting opportunity. Nonetheless, many clades fail to radiate although seemingly in the presence of ecological opportunity; until methods are developed to identify and quantify ecological opportunity, the concept will have little predictive utility in understanding a priori when a clade might be expected to radiate. Although predicted by theory, replicated adaptive radiations occur only rarely, usually in closely related and poorly dispersing taxa found in the same region on islands or in lakes. Contingencies of a variety of types may usually preclude close similarity in the outcome of evolutionary diversification in other situations. Whether radiations usually unfold in the same general sequence is unclear because of the unreliability of methods requiring phylogenetic reconstruction of ancestral events. The synthesis of ecological, phylogenetic, experimental, and genomic advances promises to make the coming years a golden age for the study of adaptive radiation; natural history data, however, will always be crucial to understanding the forces shaping adaptation and evolutionary diversification.

G. G. Simpson, one of the chief architects of evolutionary biology's modern synthesis, proposed that diversification occurs on a macroevolutionary adaptive landscape, but landscape models are seldom used to study adaptive divergence in large radiations. We show that for Caribbean Anolis lizards, diversification on similar Simpsonian landscapes leads to striking convergence of entire faunas on four islands. Parallel radiations unfolding at large temporal scales shed light on the process of adaptive diversification, indicating that the adaptive landscape may give rise to predictable evolutionary patterns in nature, that adaptive peaks may be stable over macroevolutionary time, and that available geographic area influences the ability of lineages to discover new adaptive peaks.