green, and warmouth sunfish, and a clade II that includes the modern long-ear, red-breasted, pumpkinseed, redear, and red-spotted sunfish (see section 'Phylogeny' above). The timing of this speciation event roughly corresponds with the Middle Miocene disruption that resulted in increased aridity on the plains of North America and a transition from savannah to grasslands, although the relevance of these environmental changes to the evolution of Lepomis is unclear.

Fossil record