Data for: Classic hypotheses of area, time, and climatic stability fall short in explaining high tropical species richness

Tropical biodiversity overshadows the number of species inhabiting other regions. Age, area, and stability constitute three classical ideas used to explain the higher richness in these warm and humid zones. In this study, we measured the global dynamics of tropical, arid, temperate, cold, and polar climate zones over the last 5 million years (Ma). We aimed to evaluate whether the age, area, and stability of these climate zones contribute to explaining the observed differences in species richness. We classified the paleoclimatic layers generated by the PALEO-PGEM climatic emulator – temperature and precipitation for the last 5 Ma at 1,000-year intervals – into the main Köppen-Geiger climate zones: tropical, arid, temperate, cold, and polar. We then calculated three variables: age, area, and stability. Age represents the duration that each map cell has remained within its current climate zone since its last change (map cell-based measure). Area quantifies the total extent of each climate ..., Climate data
We focused on the last 5 Ma, encompassing the Pliocene (5.3-2.6 Ma), Pleistocene (2.6-0.01 Ma), and Holocene (0.01 Ma ago to the present day; Cohen et al., 2021). This period started with a subtle warming trend in the early Pliocene (until 3.2 Ma), continuing with successive cooling pulses that culminated with the establishment of continental northern hemisphere glaciations (Zachos et al., 2001). Moreover, orographic and tectonic events occurred during this period, such as the gradual uplift of the Andes (Gregory-Wodzicki, 2000).
To examine how these climatic changes influence biogeographic patterns, we used the high-resolution climate emulator PALEO-PGEM (Holden et al., 2019), which provides global temperature and rainfall monthly data with 1,000-year temporal resolution and 0.5º spatial resolution (Fig. 1). Using monthly mean temperature (°C) and total rainfall (mm) data from PALEO-PGEM, we created 10,002 arrays representing each time step over the past 5 Ma (two arrays o..., , # Data for: Classic hypotheses of area, time, and climatic stability fall short in explaining high tropical species richness

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.h70rxwdv4](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.h70rxwdv4)

## Description of the data and file structure

Code and data files for running the analyses of the article \"Classic Hypotheses of Area, Time, and Climatic Stability Fall Short in Explaining High Tropical Species Richness\". This repository includes area and richness data, climate classification arrays, landmass shapefiles, species presence/absence databases, and the R script used for processing and analysing.

### Files and variables

#### File: Area\_databases.zip

**Description:** 

* \"Total_area_global.csv\": Global area (km²) of climate zones across all time steps.
* \"class\": climate zone (1 = Tropical; 2 =  Arid; 3 = Temperate; 4 = Cold; 5 = Polar).
* \"value\": area in square kilometres (km2).
* \"layer\": Time step (from present as \"Time 1\", to 5 million years as \"Time 5,00...,