Biogeographic affiliation and centers of richness as predictors of elevational range-size patterns for Malesian flora

Our goal was to interrogate the idea that “mountain passes are higher in the tropics” by investigating ecological and biogeographic drivers of elevational range-sizes patterns among equatorial flora. We used herbarium records for sixty species-rich plant families, representing 18535 species total, to estimate distributions over a 4500 m elevational gradient. For each family, we estimated the change in average range-sizes with increasing elevation (i.e. Rapoport’s rule, abbreviated as ERR) and quantified 15 metrics of familial richness distribution, evolutionary age, and biogeographic affiliation. We visualized covariation across families using phylogenetic principal components analysis (pPCA). We then evaluated how family-level ERR slopes correlated with each metric individually, as well as when using multivariate techniques to reduce dimensionality. We hypothesized that if long term climate stability over millions of years promotes habitat specialization, then among taxa with longer-te..., This dataset includes species-level elevational ranges and occurrence distribution summaries for >31k plant species from Malesia, which includes the Malay Peninsula and islands of Sumatra, Borneo, Philippines, Java, Lesser Sunda Isles, Sulawesi, Maluki, and New Guinea (excluding the Bismarck archipelago). 
For details on methods, data-sources, data standardization practices, or nomencalture used for “Biogeographic history and centers of richness define elevational range-size patterns for Malesian flora” refer to main document and Supporting information. The data used in the main manuscript is a subset of this Dryad file, selecting only species with two or more observations and from a species-rich family.
Note, the original sources of data included more than a half-million entries from multiple data-sources, most origininating from GBIF.org. The Dryad data file does not include herbarium entries that were excluded due to being flagged as erroneous, non-relevant, or with information th..., , # Biogeographic affiliation and centers of richness as predictors of elevational range-size patterns for Malesian flora

## Description of the data and file structure

**Taxonomic Columns**

* Group – Angiosperms, Bryophytes, Gymnosperms, Pteridophytes
* Order – 109 unique values
* Family – 423 unique values
* Genus – 3575 unique values
* Species – 31277 unique values

**Elevation Distribution Columns**

* obs – Estimated number of unique records of a given species
* elev.min – minimum elevation (m a.s.l.) where a species has been observed or collected
* elev.max - maximum elevation (m a.s.l.) where a species has been observed or collected
* elev.avg – average elevation (m a.s.l.) where a species has been observed or collected
* elev.sd – standard deviation (m) of elev.avg estimate; NA (n/a; not applicable) values shown if the number of observations is equal to one
* extent – elev.max minus elev.min; indicates range-size (m)

**Location Name Columns**

Named afte...