Ecological opportunities can be provided to organisms that cross stringent biogeographic barriers towards environments with new ecological niches. Wallace's and Lyddeker's lines are arguably the most famous biogeographic barriers, separating the Asian and Australo-Papuan biotas. One of the most ecomorphologically diverse groups of reptiles, the pythons, is distributed across these lines, and are remarkably more diverse in phenotype and ecology east of Wallace's line in Australo-Papua. We used an anchored hybrid enrichment approach, with near complete taxon sampling, to extract mitochondrial genomes and 376 nuclear loci to resolve and date their phylogenetic history. Biogeographic reconstruction demonstrates that they originated in Asia around 38-45 Ma and then invaded Australo-Papua around 23 Ma. Australo-Papuan pythons display a sizeable expansion in morphological space, with shifts towards numerous new adaptive optima in head and body shape, coupled with the evolution of new micro-habitat preferences. We provide an updated taxonomy of pythons and our study also demonstrates how ecological opportunity following colonization of novel environments can promote morphological diversification in a formerly ecomorphologically conservative group.

中文翻译：

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系统基因组学、生物地理学和形态测量学揭示了跨越华莱士线后巨蟒的快速表型进化

可以为跨越严格的生物地理障碍进入具有新生态位的环境的生物提供生态机会。Wallace 和 Lyddeker 的线可以说是最著名的生物地理障碍，将亚洲和澳大利亚-巴布亚生物区分开来。蟒蛇是生态形态学上最多样化的爬行动物群之一，分布在这些品系中，并且在华莱士线以东的澳大利亚 - 巴布亚线的表型和生态学上更加多样化。我们使用锚定混合富集方法，具有近乎完整的分类单元采样，提取线粒体基因组和 376 个核位点，以解析和确定它们的系统发育历史。生物地理重建表明，它们在 38-45 Ma 左右起源于亚洲，然后在 23 Ma 左右入侵澳大利亚 - 巴布亚。Australo-Papuan python 在形态空间上表现出相当大的扩展，在头部和身体形状上向许多新的适应性优化转变，加上新的微栖息地偏好的演变。我们提供了更新的蟒蛇分类，我们的研究还展示了新环境殖民后的生态机会如何促进以前生态形态保守的群体的形态多样化。