**2. Data analysis**

Besides presenting a brief literature review, this study compiles abundance data and updated floristic information from the most representative tree phytosociological studies of the Atlantic Forest formations in the state of Paraná, Southern Brazil. The data were obtained from scientific papers, doctoral thesis, master dissertations and from our own surveys performed for at least 10 years in the region (Table 1). The floristic information from 39 studies encompassing 58 forest sites was included in the present study.

There was a difficulty in finding studies with same inclusion criteria (same diameter at breast height – DBH) for different formations. The minimum DBH value available in the original dataset ranged from 3.1 to 10.0 cm. This range was therefore considered in the present study. Additionally, the different sample sizes were not standardized among surveys.

The altitudes of the sites range from 5 to 1750 m a.s.l. The most distant sites (separated by 590 km) are located in the following geographic coordinates: 25°23' S; 48°13' W, near the Atlantic Ocean and 22°43' S; 53°18' W, near the Upper Paraná River (Figure 1).

Sites in early and middle sucessional stages, as well as undetermined *taxa* and exotic species were not included. *Taxa* identified only to the family or genus level were grouped according to taxonomic hierarchy. For example: the Myrtaceae group included many undetermined *taxa* of this family, and the *Lonchocarpus* group comprised undetermined species of this genus. For the richness estimation, each taxonomic group of undetermined *taxa* was considered as a unique species. The data underwent a detailed review to check all accepted species names and synonymy according to the "Species List of the Brazilian Flora" (Forzza et al., 2010). The compilation of the surveys on forest structure comprised 29 hectares of sampled area and 36627 measured individuals. The diversity indexes were calculated according to Magurran (1988). Canonical correspondence analyses (CCA) processed by the program CANOCO 4.5 (Ter Braak & Smilauer, 2002) were used to assess the relationship between abundance of the tree species of 58 sites comprising nine Atlantic Forest formations, and geo-climatic variables. The matrix with abundances per forest site includes 631 species. The geo-climatic matrix includes the following variables: distance from the ocean, annual temperature, altitude and annual rainfall. Data not presented in the original studies were obtained from climatic maps of IAPAR (Caviglione et al., 2000). Major approximations of mean annual temperatures (decrease of 0.54 ºC for every 100 m of increased altitude) were used following recommendations in Roderjan & Grodski (1999). The Brazilian official vegetation classification (Veloso et al., 1991; IBGE, 1992) was used to group the sites into each Atlantic Forest formation (see below).
