Diversity, pattern and ecological drivers of freshwater fish in China and adjacent areas

中国是世界上大型水生生物多样性丰富的地区之一，但其详细的生物多样性清单、分布格局和生态驱动力尚不完全清楚，这阻碍了大规模水生生物多样性的保护和全球尺度的格局分析。为了填补这一知识空白，我们根据我们长期调查和从165个支流和次流域级别的水文单位收集的详尽数据，编制了中国和邻近地区的综合水生鱼类丰富度和分布数据库。然后，我们使用物种存在/缺失数据的异速矩阵和分类关系阐明了生物地理模式。最后，我们评估了三个假设的解释力，即“面积”、“能量”和“历史”，这三个假设可以解释多样性模式。总共有2,063种利用淡水生物。

China is one of the regions with the richest aquatic biodiversity globally. However, its detailed biodiversity inventory, distribution patterns, and ecological driving forces remain incompletely understood, which hinders large-scale aquatic biodiversity conservation and global-scale pattern analysis. To fill this knowledge gap, we compiled a comprehensive aquatic fish richness and distribution database for China and its adjacent regions based on our long-term field surveys and exhaustive data collected from 165 hydrological units at the tributary and sub-basin levels. Subsequently, we elucidated biogeographic patterns using allometric matrices of species presence/absence data and taxonomic relationships. Finally, we evaluated the explanatory power of three hypotheses—"Area", "Energy", and "History"—that can explain biodiversity patterns. A total of 2,063 freshwater organisms were recorded in this study.