Correlation and significance analyses of α-diversity with elevation and among various mountains, respectively.

α-Diversity indices included the Patrick, Simpson, Shannon, and Pielou indices. Mountains were DD, BT, DT, ML, HY, YZ, YD, SU, and SE; mountain names indicated by abbreviated letters are shown in Table 1. Different or the same small letters present significant or insignificant differences (PP>0.05), respectively. The data for correlation coefficients in the analyses of α-diversity with elevation are listed with the corresponding P values in brackets. In significance analyses of α-diversity among various mountains, significance levels were expressed with different small letters. The data were collected from six quadrats on each of nine mountain sites (54 quadrats in total); means for each mountain site were used in the analysis. Therefore, each mountain site had one elevation, so nine α-diversity values were used in each correlation analysis. However, the six plots in each mountain were not averaged, so six value were used in each significance analysis for each site.