HOSTS - a Database of the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants

__Please note: HOSTS will not be further updated or amended. This dataset is an archival resource and has been made available in full for those who wish to re-use and build on the data, not as an ongoing project.__ Records of caterpillar hostplants are scattered through published and manuscript sources worldwide and are difficult to retrieve. Many rearing records are never published and so are not accessible to other entomologists. But collected hostplant records form a valuable scientific resource that can be used eventually to answer broader biological questions about how Lepidoptera and plants interact (eg, Letourneau, Hagen & Robinson, 2001). It provides information of immediate relevance to agriculture, ecology, forestry, conservation and taxonomy. HOSTS brings together an enormous body of information on what the world's butterfly and moth (Lepidoptera) caterpillars eat. The web-based version presented here offers a synoptic data set drawn from about 180,000 records comprising taxonomically 'cleaned' hostplant data for about 22,000 Lepidoptera species drawn from about 1600 published and manuscript sources. We hope that it will be useful to a wide range of biologists and that it will act as a spur to further recording and analysis of caterpillar-plant interactions.

请注意：HOSTS 将不会再进行更新或修订。本数据集属于归档资源，已完整公开，供有意愿复用该数据并在此基础上开展研究的人士使用，而非一项持续推进的项目。

全球范围内已发表及手稿类文献中，关于鳞翅目（Lepidoptera）幼虫寄主植物的记录散落各处，难以检索获取。大量饲养记录从未正式发表，因此其他昆虫学家无法获取这些资料。但已收集的寄主植物记录是极具价值的科学资源，最终可用于解答鳞翅目与植物相互作用相关的更广泛生物学问题（例如Letourneau、Hagen与Robinson，2001）。

该数据集可为农业、生态学、林学、保护生物学以及分类学研究提供直接相关的参考信息。

HOSTS 整合了海量关于全球蝶类与蛾类（鳞翅目）幼虫取食对象的资料。本次发布的网页版数据集为概要型数据集，其数据源自约18万条记录，涵盖了从约1600份已发表及手稿类来源中提取的、经分类学清洗后的约22000种鳞翅目物种的寄主植物数据。

我们希望本数据集能够为广大生物学家群体提供助力，并推动鳞翅目幼虫与植物相互作用相关的进一步记录与分析工作。