Macroecological patterns in European butterflies unveil strong interrelations between larval diet breadth, latitudinal range size, and voltinism

Diet breadth is one of the fundamental species traits of an herbivorous insect, as it strongly determines its ecological niche and, at the same time, its ability to cope with changing environmental conditions. To what extent this trait is associated with other characteristics that may influence a species’ ability to respond to environmental changes, however, is yet poorly understood. Using European butterflies as a model group of holometabolous insect herbivores, we here tested whether larval diet breadth is positively related with latitudinal range size (i.e., north-south extent of global distribution), voltinism, and adult body size. We further investigated whether range size, voltinism, and body size are associated with each other. In order to test for these relationships, we based our analyses on a solid, time-calibrated butterfly phylogeny as well as on an updated host plant database that reflects interactions between butterfly larvae and their food plants in a yet unparalleled bre...,
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available Trait dabases for European butterflies
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Dataset “Europe\_Butt\_Data.xlsx”
 
Column names             &            Definitions
**Family name**
**Subfamily name**
**Genus name**
**Species name**
**Tax\_diet**                                            Taxonomic diet breadth (i.e., number of utilised host plant genera)
**Phyl\_diet**                                          Phylogenetic diet breadth (i.e., mean pairwise phylogenetic distance         
among utilised host plant genera)
**Vol\_kat**                                              Voltinism (i.e., univoltine vs. multivoltine)
**Body\_size**                                        Average adult wingspan (mm); for species with sexual size dimorphism only for males
**Range**                                               Latitudinal range size (i.e., north-south extent of a species range expressed in count of latitudinal degrees)