Data from: Extinction cascades partially estimate herbivore losses in a complete Lepidoptera-plant food web

The loss of species from an ecological community can have cascading
effects leading to the extinction of other species. Specialist herbivores
are highly diverse and may be particularly susceptible to extinction due
to host plant loss. We used a bipartite food web of 900 Lepidoptera
(butterfly and moth) herbivores and 2403 plant species from Central Europe
to simulate the cascading effect of plant extinctions on Lepidoptera
extinctions. Realistic extinction sequences of plants, incorporating
red-list status, range size, and native status, altered subsequent
Lepidoptera extinctions. We compared simulated Lepidoptera extinctions to
the number of actual regional Lepidoptera extinctions and found that all
predicted scenarios underestimated total observed extinctions but
accurately predicted observed extinctions attributed to host loss (n = 8,
14%). Likely, many regional Lepidoptera extinctions occurred for reasons
other than loss of host plant alone, such as climate change and habitat
loss. Ecological networks can be useful in assessing a component of
extinction risk to herbivores based on host loss, but further factors may
be equally important.