The interplay between range expansion and concomitant diversification is of fundamental interest to evolutionary biologists, particularly when linked to intercontinental dispersal and/or large scale extinctions. The evolutionary history of true frogs has been characterized by circumglobal range expansion. As a lineage that survived the Eocene–Oligocene extinction event (EOEE), the group provides an ideal system to test the prediction that range expansion triggers increased net diversification. We constructed the most densely sampled, time-calibrated phylogeny to date in order to: (i) characterize tempo and patterns of diversification; (ii) assess the impact of the EOEE; and (iii) test the hypothesis that range expansion was followed by increased net diversification. We show that late Eocene colonization of novel biogeographic regions was not affected by the EOEE and surprisingly, global expansion was not followed by increased net diversification. On the contrary, the diversification rate declined or did not shift following geographical expansion. Thus, the diversification history of true frogs contradicts the prevailing expectation that amphibian net diversification accelerated towards the present or increased following range expansion. Rather, our results demonstrate that despite their dynamic biogeographic history, true frogs diversified at a relatively constantly rate, even as they colonized the major land masses of Earth.

Fig. S1. Time-calibrated Bayesian phylogeny of Ranidae with corresponding posterior probabilities and 95% HPD age intervals.Fig. S1.pdfFig. S2. Ancestral range reconstruction under the best-fit, BAYAREALIKE+J model.Fig. S2.pdfFig. S3. Results of the TESS analysis performed on the entire phylogeny.Fig. S3.pdfFig. S4. Speciation rates through time for subclades that dispersed to a new geographic region.Fig. S4.jpgTable S1. Genbank accession numbers for samples used in this study.Table S1.xlsxTable S2. Model comparison results from the BioGeoBEARS analysis.Table S2.xlsx