PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Michael J. Landis AU - Joshua G. Schraiber TI - Punctuated evolution shaped modern vertebrate diversity AID - 10.1101/151175 DP - 2017 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 151175 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/18/151175.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/18/151175.full AB - The relative importance of different modes of evolution in shaping phenotypic diversity remains a hotly debated question. Fossil data suggest that stasis may be a common mode of evolution, while modern data suggest very fast rates of evolution. One way to reconcile these observations is to imagine that evolution is punctuated, rather than gradual, on geological time scales. To test this hypothesis, we developed a novel maximum likelihood framework for fitting Lévy processes to comparative morphological data. This class of stochastic processes includes both a gradual and punctuated component. We found that a plurality of modern vertebrate clades examined are best fit by punctuated processes over models of gradual change, gradual stasis, and adaptive radiation. When we compare our results to theoretical expectations of the rate and speed of regime shifts for models that detail fitness landscape dynamics, we find that our quantitative results are broadly compatible with both microevolutionary models and with observations from the fossil record.