Compilation of woody species occurring in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest complex

species from this region. In the southern and southeastern Brazilian Atlantic Forest biome, three main forest types are recognized: Atlantic Forest strictu sensu , Araucaria Mixed Forest and Seasonal Forest. This database is mainly to support comparison between these three main forest types, of which Araucaria Forest does not occur in the northern portion. Abstract. The Atlantic Forest is a hotspot for biodiversity conservation because of its high levels of endemism and threatened areas. Three main forest types, differentiated by their floras, compose the Atlantic Forest: ‘Atlantic Forest’ sensu strictu , ‘Araucaria Mixed Forest’ and ‘Seasonal Forest’. The flora comprises taxa from the Amazon forest, Cerrado gallery forests and the Andean region, which makes the Atlantic Forest a relevant study system for ecologists and biogeographers. Here, we present data from 206 floristic checklists describing the occurrence of 1,916 species across the southern portion of the Atlantic Forest. This dataset can be useful for understanding mechanisms underlying plant community assembly processes and the historical relationships between different forest formations.

Atlantic Forest s.s. is associated with the Atlantic coast and once included a large area of lowland (up to ~ 50 m a.s.l.) and slope forests (~ 50-2,200 m a.s.l.) (Fig. 1). The climate is heterogeneous, being hot and wet in the lowlands and cold and wetter on the slopes (IBGE 1992, Oliveira-Filho andFontes 2000). The vegetation in the lowlands comprises forests, determined by rainfall and soil sandiness (Marques et al. 2011). Among species that determine the vegetation in the coastal plain are Maytenus obtusifolia, Byrsonima sericea, Ilex theazans, Calophyllum brasiliense, Ocotea pulchella and Myrcia multiflora (Marques et al. 2011). In the slopes, forests are highly differentiated by altitude, and species such as Drimys brasiliensis, Ilex microdonta and Weinmannia paulliniifolia characterize the vegetation (Bertoncello et al. 2011).
Araucaria Forest occurs in the highland plateau, ranging from 500 to 1600 m a.s.l. in southern and southeastern Brazil (Klein 1960). The climate is tropical and sub-tropical humid without pronounced dry periods. The mean annual rainfall ranges from 1400 to 2200 mm, and the annual mean temperature mainly ranges from 12 to 18°C (Behling 2002). The presence of species phytogeographically related to temperate Austral-Antarctic and Andean floras distinguishes communities within the Araucaria Mixed Forest from more tropical types of Brazilian Atlantic Forest (Rambo 1951). Besides Araucaria angustifolia, some other typical species found in those forests are Podocarpus lamberti (conifer), Dicksonia sellowiana (tree fern), Drimys spp. (Winteraceae), and several species of Myrtaceae and Lauraceae. Seasonal Forest occurs in the hinterland Parana River basin in the south and southeast Brazil. It is characterized by two distinct seasons with marked alternation from tropical (intense summer rainfall) to subtropical (with low winter temperatures and scarce precipitation). During the cold and dry period, 20-50% of the canopy trees drop their leaves (deciduous; IBGE 1992). The mean temperature in the winter is lower than 15ºC. The flora of Seasonal Forest is often influenced by taxa typical of open areas (Brazilian savanna). This forest type has dominance of species of Parapiptadenia, Pel-tophrum, Cariniana, Lecythis, Tabebuia and Astronium, among others (IBGE 1992).

Compilation of shrub/tree species of Atlantic Forest complex
We present compiled information from 206 floristic checklists describing the occurrence of 1,917 shrub and tree species across the geographic range of the Southern Brazilian Atlantic Forest ( Figure 1). Floristic data were obtained from published studies (see Appendix 1 for the complete list of published papers) and unpublished information (e.g. PhD and Masters research). These different sources of data employed distinct survey methodologies, such as floristic surveys, plots and point-centred quarters, varying in sample effort and size criteria for individual inclusion (minimum diameter at breast height, minimum plant height).

Structure of the database
The information from the 206 checklists is presented in the datasets Sites_info.txt and Spe-cies_sites.txt.
 Header information: Table 1 describes the information given in the column headers.

Potential uses for our compilation of woody species occurring in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest complex
The dataset is useful for understanding mechanisms underlying plant community assembly processes and the historical relationships between different forest formations. Analyses of phylobetadiversity among forest types using this dataset (Duarte et al. 2014) showed differentiation in phylogenetic composition among forest types, with higher phylogenetic diversity in Araucaria Mixed Forest. This kind of approach is important, for example, for a wider interpretation of species conservation in Brazilian Atlantic Forest. The information on species' occurrence, matched with appropriate GIS layers, can help to produce species' distributional ranges. Moreover, the data could be used to calibrate environmental niche models and project them into the past and/or future, with different climate scenarios, to model changes in the distributions of target species.