Pollinator diversity benefits natural and agricultural ecosystems, environmental health, and human welfare.

Biodiversity loss during the Anthropocene is a serious ecological challenge. Pollinators are important vectors that provide multiple essential ecosystem services but are declining rapidly in this changing world. However, several studies have argued that a high abundance of managed bee pollinators, such as honeybees (), may be sufficient to provide pollination services for crop productivity, and sociological studies indicate that the majority of farmers worldwide do not recognize the contribution of wild pollinator diversity to agricultural yield.

The species richness pattern of vascular plants along a tropical elevational gradient and the test of elevational Rapoport's rule depend on different life-forms and phytogeographic affinities.

The research about species richness pattern and elevational Rapoport's rule (ERR) have been carried out mostly in the temperate regions in the recent years and scarcely in the tropical mountains; meanwhile, it is unclear whether the ERR is consistent among different life-forms and phytogeographic affinities. Here, we compiled a database of plant species of Mount Kenya, a tropical mountain of East Africa, and divided these species into twelve groups depending on the life-form and phytogeographic affinity of each species. We inspected the species richness pattern of each group along the elevation gradient and also tested ERR of each group using Stevens' method.