This dataset contains the phylogenetic tree for the tree species in the Main experiment. It is a subset of the extensive phylogenetic tree for the Flora in the Gutianshan National Nature Reserve available from the dataset 240 (http://china.befdata.biow.uni-leipzig.de/datasets/240). Please see the respective dataset for more information on the Materials and Methiods used to derive the phylogeny (c.f. freeformat file 'Materials_and_methods2_436taxa.doc' in dataset 240). The relevant data to obtain the phylogenetic tree is stored in the freeformat file ('phy_main.tre') connected to this dataset.

We gathered sequence information, i.e. matK, rbcL and the ITS region including the 5.8s gene for all woody species from Gutianshan National Reserve (Lou & Li 1998) or closely related species available in GenBank (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/, accessed between May and June 2012). For some species of the CSPs, matK and rbcL were sequenced using standard barcoding protocols (Fazekas et al. 2012) (Accession numbers: KF569888-KF569899, Table 1). All sequences were aligned separately for the different markers using MAFFT v6 (Katoh et al. 2002). Sequences for matK and rbcL were aligned with the ‘Auto’ option in the online version of the program (http://mafft.cbrc.jp/alignment/server/). The ITS region was aligned with the ‘Q-INS-I’ option considering secondary structure of RNA using the MAFFT application at Bioportal (https://www.bioportal.uio.no/, Kumar et al. 2009)). A phylogenetic tree was inferred using a Maximum Likelihood (ML) method implemented in PhyML (Guindon & Gascuel 2003). For ML inference, the best fitting model (GTR+I+G) selected by Modeltest (Posada & Crandall 1998) was applied with the following options: tree topology search operation: best of NNI and SPR search, number of substitution rate categories =6, all other parameters were estimated (Gamma Distribution Parameter Alpha, Proportion of Invariable Sites, Transition/Transversion Ratio).

BEF China Experimental Site A (29°07'28.2"N 117°54'27.5"E) BEF China Experimental Site B (29°05'06.8"N 117°55'44.4"E)

Castanea henryi Schima superba Choerospondia axillaris Liquidambar formosana Quercus serrata Cyclobalanopsis myrsinifolia Castanopsis carlesii Cyclobalanopsis glauca Lithocarpus glaber Castanopsis sclerophylla Diospyros japonica Daphniphyllum oldhamii Cinnamomum camphora Koelreuteria bipinnata Sapindus saponaria Nyssa sinensis Triadica sebifera Triadica cochinchinensis Rhus chinensis Quercus fabri Quercus acutissima Melia azedarach Acer davidii Castanopsis fargesii Ailanthus altissima Alniphyllum fortunei Betula luminifera Celtis biondi Elaeocarpus chinensis Elaeocarpus glabripetalus Elaeocarpus japonicus Idesia polycarpa Meliosma flexuosa Machilus grijsii Machilus thunbergii Machilus leptophylla Manglietia fordiana Pheobe bournei Quercus phillyreoides

Use read.tree from package ape to read in the text file (phy_dat = read.tree("phy_main.tre")). Use the corrected species names of the tip labels to relate phylogenetic distances to trait or community data.