How to recognize evolutionary cradles and dead-end lineages? The devil, the details, and species diversification inference

Species diversification is a key process for explaining fundamental biodiversity patterns such as the latitudinal diversity gradient. Understanding species origination and extinction is also important for navigating our conservation priorities in the current biodiversity crisis. Despite the importance of these motivations, the methodological tools for studying species diversification are fairly divergent, with different approaches often producing contrasting results. Here I propose a set of methods for exploring and unifying the existing approaches for measuring the association between species characteristics and diversification. I will use this new methodological insight for re-assessing some of most emblematic issues of biogeography and conservation biology, including the existence of the latitudinal gradient of diversification and predictions of the evolutionary potential of species subjected to the anthropogenic threats. The proposed project will thus shed more light both on methodological aspects, and some of the urgent contemporary questions related to species diversification.