Data from: Extinction cascades partially estimate herbivore losses in a complete Lepidoptera-plant food web

The loss of species from an ecological community can have cascading effects leading to the extinction of other species. Specialist herbivores are highly diverse and may be particularly susceptible to extinction due to host plant loss. We used a bipartite food web of 900 Lepidoptera (butterfly and moth) herbivores and 2403 plant species from Central Europe to simulate the cascading effect of plant extinctions on Lepidoptera extinctions. Realistic extinction sequences of plants, incorporating red-list status, range size, and native status, altered subsequent Lepidoptera extinctions. We compared simulated Lepidoptera extinctions to the number of actual regional Lepidoptera extinctions and found that all predicted scenarios underestimated total observed extinctions but accurately predicted observed extinctions attributed to host loss (n = 8, 14%). Likely, many regional Lepidoptera extinctions occurred for reasons other than loss of host plant alone, such as climate change and habitat loss. Ecological networks can be useful in assessing a component of extinction risk to herbivores based on host loss, but further factors may be equally important.生态群落中的物种丧失可引发级联效应，进而导致其他物种的灭绝。专食性植食动物类群兼具极高多样性，且因宿主植物丧失而面临的灭绝风险尤为突出。我们采用源自中欧的、包含900种鳞翅目（Lepidoptera，蝶与蛾）植食动物与2403种植物的二元食物网（bipartite food web），模拟植物灭绝事件对鳞翅目物种灭绝的级联效应。基于红色名录等级、分布范围大小与本土性状态构建的符合实际的植物灭绝序列，会改变后续鳞翅目物种的灭绝进程。我们将模拟得到的鳞翅目灭绝数与实际区域内观测到的鳞翅目灭绝数进行对比，结果显示：所有预测场景均低估了实际观测到的总灭绝事件数，但却准确预测了由宿主植物丧失导致的观测灭绝事件（共8起，占比14%）。由此推测，诸多区域内鳞翅目物种的灭绝并非仅由宿主植物丧失所致，气候变化与栖息地丧失等其他因素同样可能起到关键作用。生态网络可用于评估由宿主植物丧失引发的植食动物灭绝风险组分，但其他潜在影响因素或许同样至关重要。