Annals of Botany 118: 1317–1328, 2016 doi:10.1093/aob/mcw160, available online at www.aob.oxfordjournals.org The influence of habitat on the evolution of plants: a case study across Saxifragales Rafael Rubio de Casas1,2,3,*, Mark E. Mort4 and Douglas E. Soltis5,6,* 1Estacion Experimental de Zonas Aridas, EEZA-CSIC, Carretera de Sacramento s/n, 04120 Almerıa, Spain, 2CEFE UMR 5175, CNRS, Universite de Montpellier, Universite Paul-Valery 7 Montpellier, EPHE, 1919 route de Mende, 34293 Montpellier cedex 05, France, 3Departamento de Ecologıa, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Granada, Avda. de la Fuentenueva s/n, 18071 Granada, Spain, 4Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Biodiversity Institute, University of Kansas, 1200 Sunnyside Avenue, Lawrence, KS 66045-7543, USA, 5Department of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA and 6Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA *For correspondence. E-mail
[email protected] or dsoltis@ufl.edu Received: 22 March 2016 Returned for revision: 13 June 2016 Accepted: 5 July 2016 Published electronically: 22 August 2016 Background and Aims Organismal evolution tends to be closely associated with ecological conditions. However, the extent to which this association constrains adaptation or diversification into new habitats remains unclear. We studied habitat evolution in the hyper-diverse angiosperm clade Saxifragales. Methods We used species-level phylogenies for approx. 950 species to analyse the evolution of habitat shifts as well as their influence on plant diversification. We combined habitat characterization based on floristic assignments and state-of-the art phylogenetic comparative methods to estimate within- and across-habitat diversification patterns.