**4. Conclusions**

There is a growing interest in establishing the historical causes of biological diversification phenomena. However, we are still far behind to understand the process and mechanisms generating this realized diversification. In this chapter, I discussed some limitations of current methodologies employed to infer how biogeographical events as dispersal and vicariance can promote biological diversification shifts across the evolutionary history of lineages. The majority of studies reviewed here only were able to detect a historical association between a given biogeographic event and shifts in species (or phenotypic) diversification. Although we have established that spatial and temporal changes in diversification rates are modulated by abiotic (e.g., geography and climate) and biotic factors (e.g., food availability, predator presences, and intensity), still there is a lack of understanding about specific mechanisms underlying these historical associations and what factors were important. Furthermore, I have showed that the inference of these historical associations is not a trivial matter and more robust methodologies are necessary to establish a joint inference of biogeographical events and shifts in species diversification. In addition, I outlined specific predictions for evolutionary outcomes after a given biogeographical event which can be tested using current phylogenetic comparative methods and ecologically relevant traits. However, the adoption of phylogenetic methodological approaches will not be sufficient to generate a complete understanding of how species radiated after a given dispersal or vicariance event. Accordingly, traditional ecological and genetic field-based approaches used in speciation studies will be important here.
