Patterns and driving mechanisms of β-diversity in mountain plant communities of arid regions

This repository contains data and analysis scripts used to investigate the spatial patterns and environmental drivers of taxonomic and phylogenetic β-diversity in arid mountain ecosystems. The data were collected from 72 vegetation sites along the northern slope of the central Kunlun Mountains, China. The repository includes the following components: Species Presence–Absence Matrix for Sites.csv: Presence–absence matrix of seed plant species recorded in 72 sites; Environmental Factor Data.csv: Environmental variables for each plot, including climatic factors (e.g., mean annual temperature, precipitation), topographic factors (e.g., elevation, slope), and geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude); species.csv: A complete list of all recorded species; all_code.R: A full R script for phylogenetic tree construction, β-diversity partitioning, Mantel tests, multiple regression on distance matrices (MRM), variance partitioning analysis (VPA), and data visualization. All files are provided in open formats and are fully documented to ensure reproducibility and reuse.