Data from: Synthesizing the relationships between food web structure and robustness

Species are being lost from ecosystems, and for more than 20 years,
ecologists have sought to understand the extent to which these species
losses trigger secondary extinctions—i.e., the additional loss of species
following lost resources or key interactions—measured as robustness. In
particular, ecologists aim to identify generalizable rules that explain
which types of food webs are more or less robust to secondary extinctions.
Food web structure, or the patterns formed by species and their
interactions, has been extensively studied as a potential factor that
influences robustness. However, there has not yet been a review of our
understanding of the relationships between food web structure and
robustness. We systematically reviewed 28 studies to identify the
relationships between food web structures and robustness, and how the
conclusions depend on methodological differences. More than 20 food web
structures were reported to determine robustness, but the shape and
direction of these relationships varied based on methodology. While there
are not yet generalizable patterns in structure-robustness relationships,
we find that methodological differences across studies underscored
conflicting results, impeding the potential for generality. Based on our
findings, we propose recommendations to improve these methods and identify
future research questions.