DOI: 10.5061/dryad.95x69p8qw
title: Data from: Lizard richness in mainland China is more strongly correlated with energy and climatic stability than with diversification rates

description: Aim: Contemporary environmental, historical, and evolutionary factors are
 increasingly used to decipher the drivers of spatial patterns of species
 richness. Evidence of such correlations for Chinese reptiles is scarce and
 poorly understood. We therefore explored the validity of the environmental
 capacity, historical climatic stability, and diversification rates
 hypotheses on Chinese lizard richness. Location: Mainland China Taxon:
 Squamata: Sauria Methods: We mapped the distribution ranges of all 237
 lizards in mainland China using a combination of different datasets. We
 used current environmental conditions (ambient energy, environmental
 productivity, and habitat heterogeneity), historical climate stability
 indices (long-term: since ~3.3 Ma and short-term: since the Last Glacial
 Maximum), and mean tip diversification rates to test whether current
 environmental conditions, historical climate change, and diversification
 rates drive contemporary richness patterns of lizards in China. We applied
 piecewise structural equation models (pSEM) to jointly evaluate our
 hypotheses, considering direct and indirect effects. Results:
  Chinese lizards showed latitudinal diversity gradients. We found
 consistent support for contemporary climatic and environmental
 factors' relationships with richness. Richness was also positively
 correlated with short-term climatic stability, but less so with long-term
 stability. Diversification rates were only seldom found to be positively
 correlated with lizard richness. Main conclusions: Our results support the
 environmental capacity and historical climate hypotheses, which link high
 richness to highly productive warm and stable regions (and low richness to
 cold and unstable regions). We conclude that post-speciation dispersal and
 short-term climatic oscillations quickly swamp the long-term signal of
 diversification rates and climatic fluctuations, creating strong current
 climate-richness associations.
description: The data type of this study is the species range polygons, while
 these polygons based on the geographical locations (longitude, latitude)
 of each species, these points were collected from published papers, books,
 thesis, reports, as well as personal communication by the
 authors.
description: # Data from: Lizard richness in mainland China is more strongly correlated
 with energy and climatic stability than with diversification rates
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.95x69p8qw](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.95x69p8qw) <br> ## Description of the data and file structure This dataset including three files: 1.      An EXCEL including all raw references that we got the distribution points of Chinese lizards. 2.      The polygon files of Chinese lizards that used for this study, there are two versions of the polygons: Mainland20230704.shp and 266MAp20230615.shp The first one is the file that we used in this study (only mainland China), the second files including the Chinese lizards from both mainland and Hainan &Taiwan islands (N=266species). Besides, all the map of Chinese lizards also can be found from [www.sinitic-reptile.top](http://www.sinitic-reptile.top/). (please email Tao Liang if you cannot visit the website for the maps). 3.      The nexus file including all 1000 random trees of all 266 species, besides there is a word file that including all genbank information for all species and the details when building the tree.