Data from: Is there a temperate bias in our understanding of how climate change will alter plant-herbivore interactions? a meta-analysis of experimental studies

Climate change can drive major shifts in community composition and interactions between resident species. However, the magnitude of these changes depends on the type of interactions and the biome in which they occur. We review the existing conceptual framework for how climate change will influence tropical plant-herbivore interactions and formalize a similar framework for the temperate zone. We then conduct the first biome-specific tests of how plant-herbivore interactions respond to changes in temperature, precipitation, ambient CO2, and ozone. We used quantitative meta-analysis to compare predicted and observed changes in experimental studies. Empirical studies were heavily biased towards temperate systems, so testing predicted changes in tropical plant-herbivore interactions was virtually impossible. Furthermore, most studies investigated the effects of CO2 with limited plant and herbivore species. Irrespective of location, most studies manipulated only one factor, despite different factors acting synergistically to alter responses of plants and herbivores. Finally, studies on belowground plant-herbivore interactions were rare; those conducted suggest climate change could have major impacts on belowground subsystems. Our results reveal a disconnection between the growing literature proposing how climate change will influence plant-herbivore interactions and the studies testing these predictions. General conclusions will also be hampered without better integration of above- and belowground systems, assessing the impacts of multiple climate change factors simultaneously, and using greater diversity of species in experiments.