Dataset for estimation of the biotic and climatic niche breadths and geographic range size of beech (Fagus) species worldwide

This dataset could be used to test whether the commonly observed positive range size–niche breadth relationship, as posited by the “niche breadth hypothesis”, exists for Fagus, one of the most dominant and widespread broad‐leaved deciduous tree genera in temperate forests of the Northern Hemisphere.

There are many ways to estimate niche breadth. Here, we estimated biotic and climatic niche breadths per species using plot‐based co‐occurrence data and climate data, respectively. The range sizes of the Fagus species were estimated with the raw data from the Chorology Database Halle. We examined the relationships of these estimates, and found that neither biotic niche breadth nor climatic niche breadth was correlated with range size, and the two niche breadths were incongruent as well.

Our findings proved that the “niche breadth hypothesis” did not apply to the genus Fagus, and thus more attention should be paid to other factors (e.g., high among‐region variation in available niche sp...