The richness and abundance of climbers vary among communities and may depend on soil properties, climate, perturbation history and variables of community structure. Our aim was to test the hypothesis that, in spite of the influence of these variables, climber diversity may also be related to tree diversity. We gathered data from a rainforest site, three sites of seasonal semideciduous forest, and two sites of savanna with different physiognomies in SE Brazil. Diversity descriptors were represented by species abundance distribution (SAD), richness, and Shannon index (H'). We compared trees for richness using rarefaction analysis, for SAD using Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, and for H' using t-test with Bonferroni sequential correction. The same analyses were performed for climbers. Also, we compared floristic similarity of climbers and trees among the sites using modified Sørensen index for abundance. The relationship among the diversity descriptors between climbers and trees was tested with linear regression. The diversity descriptors varied similarly among the sites, indicating that trees and climbers respond in similar way to variation of factors. We suppose that the major variable that influences the similar variation of diversity of trees and climbers is fragmentation process. For example, continuous forests would have more richness than fragmented ones. Tree H' showed a significant positive relationship with climber richness; the other descriptors did not show any significant relationship. Shannon H' is a heterogeneity index that considers both richness and SAD, attaining maximum values when the species number is great and all the species have similar abundances. We propose that a) the greater the tree H', the greater the heterogeneity of the tree community; b) this heterogeneity would be expressed by many different combinations of traits favorable or unfavorable to climbers; c) each combination would appear with some abundance; and d) this heterogeneity would enhance the number of potential niches for climbers, thus promoting climber richness.