Habitat is more important than climate and animal richness at shaping latitudinal variation in plant diversity in China

Species data from 249 National Nature Reserves in China were used to identify potential underlying drivers of latitudinal gradients in plant diversity. We used generalized linear models to assess correlations between predictor and plant species richness. Variance partitioning was then used to decompose the variation in plant richness into different taxonomic levels among the three groups of predictors (i.e., climate, habitat and animal). We found that species richness showed significant latitudinal trends in richness (p?