Locality_data

To obtain general information relating to the occurrence of the three pine species and facilitate representative sampling of occurrence points from their whole ranges, we first referenced their distributions described by the Flora of China and the Chinese Virtual Herbarium (CVH) (http://www.cvh.org.cn/englishindex.asp) database. Many of the occurrence records for pine species in the CVH database lack exact geo-coordinates, so we used the information available in the database as a guide, and carried out extensive field surveys to assess the distribution of the three pines in the period 2003 - 2010. In total, we collected 412 geo-referenced occurrence records; 115 for Pinus densata, 149 for P. tabuliformis, and 148 for P. yunnanensis.