Bawangling Observation

1 Introduction Explaining how biodiversity is generated and maintained across space remains a central goal in ecology and biogeography (Whittaker et al. 1973; Levin 1992; Chave 2013; Bernardo-Madrid et al. 2025). Local and regional diversity are linked by β-diversity, which captures compositional differences among communities and thus provides a direct lens on the processes that structure assemblages (Whittaker 1960; Crist et al. 2003).