Herbivore spatio-temporal dynamics in BEF-China (2017-2022)

Insect herbivores moderate forest functioning under global environmental change, which makes understanding herbivore community dynamics a key challenge of ecological research. Plant-regulated bottom-up effects and climatic conditions determine herbivore fluctuations, but their role in driving herbivore community composition and stability over time and space remains understudied. We unravel the relative importance of tree species richness, functional diversity, trait composition, tree growth, and climate in driving herbivore spatio-temporal stability and the resulting patterns in abundance, richness, and phylogenetic diversity. Our results revealed strong positive bottom-up effects of tree species richness on herbivore abundance, richness, and phylogenetic diversity, moderated by herbivore community stability. Tree growth and microclimate had additional effects that were largely independent of tree richness. These patterns varied across seasons and years due to changes in environmental c..., , , # Herbivore spatio-temporal dynamics in BEF-China (2017-2022)

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fn2z34v37](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fn2z34v37)

This is the data of herbivore caterpillars from BEF-China collected from 2017 to 2022.

Please contact Ming-Qiang Wang ([e-mail]) for any questions.

## Description of the data and file structure

* mean_curve_all.csv: the data used for plotting the figure on herbivore fluctuations across years

- mean_curve2.csv: the data used for analyzing the models of effects of macroclimate

* mean_curve3.csv: the data used for plotting the figures on effects of macroclimate on herbivores

- plot_env.csv: the data used for linear models and SEMs and their figures

* season_effect_size.csv: the effects size table of overall herbivores

- sep_effect_size_final2_split_tuli_without_direct.csv: the effect size table of seasonality (effect size was only kept by summing negative and positive effects)

* sep_effect_size_final2_split.csv:the effect size t...,