Response to comment on "Interspecific competition limits bird species' ranges on tropical mountains".

Xing et al. ( 1 ) create new variables and fit models to argue against the hypothesis that interspecific competition shapes species' elevational ranges. However, their key newly created variable is best interpreted as a proxy for the important variable of the interspecific competition hypothesis. Thus, their reanalysis uncovers the patterns we already described that are consistent with the interspecific competition hypothesis.