Paleogeographical origins and worldwide expansion of bats

This might be one of the most complex figures I have generated thus far. The way how data was gathered and analyzed is intricate and described in detail in the paper now published in Nature, entitled: Reference genomes and fossils revise bat family phylogeny and biogeography. The analyses were led by William Thomas and are available in his Github repository.

Continental vectors were generated from paleo-digital elevation models (PaleoDEMs) easily accesible via the chronosphere R package and displayed with a Lambert azimuthal equal-area projection. As the authors mention: "Each PaleoDEM is an estimate of the elevation of the land surface and depth of the ocean basins measured in meters (m) at a resolution of 1x1 degrees". Because height was not really relevant for the visualization, I opted for using it to outline the continents, and used the visualization of continental configurations 70 Ma for a, and 55 Ma for b.

The figures displayed here are the originals. The figure in the paper was modified by Nature's editorial team to fit the journal's style, so make sure you use those if you are citing the paper. Credits of all vectors and images used in the figures are available in the paper's figure captions.