Study location and datasets
The HMs (97º-106 ºE, 21º-35ºN) lies in the southwest of China, covering most part of Yunnan and Sichuan provinces as well as the east part of Tibet. Aiming to detect the role of trait conservatism, functional role of trait as well as habitat complexity in assembling rodent communities, we extracted two rodent datasets based on local sampling survey (local sampling dataset, LSD) and regional records along elevation (regional elevation-range dataset, RED). LSD was extracted from 15 field surveys along local elevational gradient in HMs, including 80 sampling sites containing 45 rodent species (20 genera, 5 families) (Du et al.2017). Six sampling sites in LSD having been conducted within farmland were excluded in Du et al. (2017) to get rid of anthropic impacts on elevational pattern of rodent community structure. In this work, farmland sampling sites were included within LSD, as we also expected to compare patterns and underlying processes with those in RED (which contains all typical vegetation types within HMs).
    Regional elevation-range dataset (RED) were extracted from historical studies, local surveys and museum records within HMs region (Wen et al.2016a; Wen et al. 2016b). As some of historical collections were conducted according to administrative divisions (i.e., province and county), species surviving within non-typical montane habitats (i.e., arid and semi-arid desert) have been recorded within HMs. In order to get rid of this sampling bias in RED, we further conducted data cleaning and excluded species in non-typical habitats at the edges of HMs. The elevational scope in this work ranged from the base of HMs (< 1000 m) to 5000 m. The base zones below 1000 m were treated as one elevational band, as many historical records below 1000 m were hard been further divided. Areas above 1000 m were equally divided into 100-m elevation bands (i.e., 1000m~ 1100m; 1100m~ 1200m… 4900m~ 5000m). In total, RED contained 94 rodent species (46 genera, 7 families) distributing within 41 elevational bands in HMs. The taxonomy of rodent species followed Wilson and Reeder (2005), except that we recognize Niviventer ling as being distinct from N. confucianus (Du et al. 2017 and their reference).