Martin M. Turcotte
Department of Biology
University of Toronto at Mississauga
Mississauga, Ontario L5L 1C6 Canada
E-mail: mart.turcotte@gmail.com

Christina J. M. Thomsen
Department of Biology
University of Ottawa
Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5 Canada

Geoffrey T. Broadhead
Department of Neurobiology and Behavior
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853 USA

Paul V. A. Fine
Department of Integrative Biology
University of California
Berkeley, California 94720 USA

Ryan M. Godfrey
Department of Biology
University of Toronto at Mississauga
Mississauga, Ontario L5L 1C6 Canada

Greg P. A. Lamarre
Université des Antilles-Guyane
UMR Ecologie des Forêts de Guyane
97310 Kourou, French Guiana
and
INRA, UMR Ecologie des Forêts de Guyane
97310 Kourou, French Guiana

Sebastian T. Meyer
Technische Universität München
Terrestrial Ecology Research Group
Department of Ecology and Ecosystem Management
Center for Food and Life Sciences Weihenstephan
Hans-Carl-von-Carlowitz-Platz 2, 85354 Freising Germany

Lora A. Richards
Biology Department
University of Nevada
Reno, Nevada 89557 USA

Marc T. J. Johnson
Department of Biology
University of Toronto at Mississauga
Mississauga, Ontario L5L 1C6 Canada

Leaf_herbivory.csv (MD5: 4ee09b5d292087d92450c96fea54863c)

Herbivory is viewed as a major driver of plant evolution and the most important energy pathway from plants to higher trophic levels. Therefore, understanding patterns of herbivory on plants remains a key focus in evolution and ecology. The evolutionary impacts of leaf herbivory include altering plant fitness, local adaptation, the evolution of defenses, and the diversification of plants as well as natural enemies. Leaf herbivory also impacts ecological processes such as plant productivity, community composition, and ecosystem nutrient cycling. Understanding the impact of herbivory on these ecological and evolutionary processes requires species-specific, as opposed to community-level, measures of herbivory. In addition, species-specific data enables the use of modern comparative methods to account for phylogenetic nonindependence. Although hundreds of studies have measured natural rates of leaf consumption, we are unaware of any accessible compilation of these data. We created such a data set to provide the raw data needed to test general hypotheses relating to plant–herbivore interactions and to test the influence of biotic and abiotic factors on herbivory rates across large spatial scales. A large repository will make this endeavor more efficient and robust. In total, we compiled 2641 population level measures for either annual or daily rates of leaf herbivory across 1145 species of vascular plants collected from 189 studies. All damage measures represent natural occurrences of herbivory that span numerous angiosperm, gymnosperm, and fern species. To enable researchers to explore the causes of variation in herbivory and how these might interact, we added information about the study sites including: geolocation, climate classification, habitat descriptions (e.g., seashore, grassland, forest, agricultural fields), and plant trait information concerning growth form and duration (e.g., annual vs. perennial). We also included extensive details of the methodology used to measure leaf damage, including seasons and months of sampling, age of leaves, and the method used to estimate percentage area missing. We anticipate that these data will make it possible to test important hypotheses in the plant–herbivore literature, including the plant apparency hypothesis, the latitudinal-herbivory defense hypothesis, the resource availability hypothesis, and the macroevolutionary escalation of defense hypothesis.

Key words: browsing; climatic variation; defoliation; folivory; global census; grazing; latitudinal gradients; leaf age; leaf consumption; plant–herbivore interactions; primary consumption; trophic interactions.