Trophic rewilding restructure the insect communities according to their functional traits: Insights from a multitaxa study

Trophic rewilding, or returning vertebrate megaherbivores to defaunated ecosystems, is advocated for restoring ecosystems and biodiversity conservation. As many groups of modern insects radiated during the Neogene era into landscapes inhabited by abundant megafauna, they should be adapted to disturbances provided by megaherbivores’ presence. In the Czech Republic, 11 fenced localities have been trophically rewilded by horse, the reconstructed “aurochs”, wisent, and water buffalo, in various combinations, since 2016 onwards. At these localities, we established 1-ha plots in a rewilded/control design, characterised their vegetation, and surveyed butterflies (passive monitoring since the rewilding onset), macro-moths, bees and wasps, ants, and orthopterans (single-season rewilded/control surveys). We analysed the data using mixed linear models to compare insect species’ richness and abundances, and constrained ordinations with interpretation of ordination scores by the life history traits ..., , , # Data from: Trophic rewilding restructure the insect communities according to their functional traits: Insights from a multitaxa study [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.nvx0k6f2z](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.nvx0k6f2z) ## Description of the data and file structure ### Walter_et_al._2026_tables.xlsx xls. file containing species, environmental, and trait data from surveys of trophically rewilded localities in the Czech Republic. Sheet 1: butterflies abundances Sheet 2: environmental data used to analyse butterflies Sheet 3: trait data used to analyse butterflies Sheet 4: moths abundances Sheet 5: environmental data used to analyse moths Sheet 6: trait data used to analyse moths Sheet 7: bees and wasps abundances Sheet 8: environmental data used to analyse bees and wasps Sheet 9: trait data used to analyse bees and wasps Sheet 10: ants abundances Sheet 11: environmental data used to analyse ants Sheet 12: trait data used to analyse ants Sheet 13: Orthoptera presence data ..., ,