Fig. 1: Morphospace of the locomotor skeleton of Anolis lizards.

a Phylogenetic relationship between major groups of Anolis lizards. The number of species per group included in this study, the total number of species, and the resulting percentages, are given in brackets and are proportional to the height of the triangles in the phylogram. The deepest split within Anolis marks the dispersal of mainland forms to the Greater Antillean islands. One lineage derived from the Greater Antillean lineage has recolonized the mainland (Secondary Mainland clade). The Lesser Antilles has been colonized from two different sources, once from the Primary Mainland clade and once from the Greater Antillean lineage. The timeline indicates the age of the major divergences as reported by Poe et al.²⁶. b The first three principal components of the locomotor skeleton of all 271 species included in this study in a 3D morphospace. The two sister species, A. porcus and A. chamaeleonides, have undergone an extreme shift in morphospace along the first PC, approaching the position of distantly related genera. Pictures show an A. bimaculatus representing the second most “average” Anolis species (i.e., closest to the centroid described by PC1–3 of all Anolis species), a Corytophanes cristatus representing distant relatives to Anolis, and an A. porcus representing the two species with the most extreme shifts in morphospace along PC1. c The first and second PCs visualizing morphospace occupancy of Anolis species color-coded by group. The 110 species of the Greater Antilles show a higher morphological disparity compared to the 107 species of the Secondary Mainland clade and to the 21 species of the Lesser Antilles (see also and Supplementary Tables 3 and 4). Large circles mark the inferred position of the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of the three major groups and of all Anolis species (in red, see also panel a). d The first and second PCs visualizing morphospace occupancy of Anolis species color-coded by ecomorph. e, f The first and third PCs color-coded by biogeographic group and ecomorph, respectively. See Supplementary Fig. 2 for a more detailed exploration of the PC analyses. Picture credit: C. cristatus: picture sourced from “Nature Picture Library”; A. bimaculatus: picture sourced from https://commons.wikimedia.org/ under the licence CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en; creator: Clinton and Charles Robertson; without modifications of the original image); A. porcus: picture sourced from “Alamy Limited”. Abbreviation: ML mainland.