DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18668204
title: Data and code of the study "Three decades of butterfly–plant interaction turnover explained by climate and species loss"

description: This repository contains the datasets and R scripts used in the analyses for the manuscript:



Colom, P., Stefanescu, C., Corbera, J. & Lázaro, A. (2025).Three decades of butterfly–plant interaction turnover explained by climate and species loss.


The study uses long-term (13–29 years) standardized data on butterfly–plant interactions from seven Mediterranean communities to investigate how inter-annual climate variability and species loss shape temporal interaction turnover and its components — species turnover and rewiring.

Repository contents



The zip folder includes:





Processed datasets used in all statistical analyses




Derived data products (turnover metrics, phenology metrics, rewiring metrics, persistence, etc.)




Fully annotated R scripts (00–10) allowing complete reproduction of the analyses




Metadata describing all variables and units



The README provides:





Project structure




Script descriptions and order of execution




Explicit dependencies between scripts




R version and package versions used in the analyses




Full metadata describing all variables, units, and data structure




Explanation of subset vs full datasets



All scripts use relative paths (here package) and can be executed sequentially following the order described in the README file. 

Data availability note

Raw butterfly abundance and butterfly–plant interaction data from the Catalan Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (CBMS) are not publicly distributed due to data-sharing restrictions.

To ensure reproducibility:





A subset of the raw data is included to allow users to run and test all scripts.




All processed datasets used in the manuscript analyses are provided.




Outputs generated from the full dataset are archived in this repository.



Raw data can be requested from the corresponding author or the CBMS under reasonable request.

External dependency

Phylogenetic analyses require the European butterfly phylogeny:

Wiemers et al. (2020). ZooKeys 938: 97.

The tree file (EUROPEAN_BUTTERFLIES_FULLMCC_DROPTIPED.nwk) must be obtained from the original publication repository and is not redistributed here.

Data provenance and acknowledgements





Butterfly and interaction data: Collected by the authors in the frame of the Catalan Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (www.catalanbms.org).




Climate data: downscaled using ClimateDT (Marchi et al. 2024) and CHELSA v2.1 (Karger et al. 2017).




Trait data: compiled from Vila et al. (2018), García-Barros et al. (2013), and own measurements.



 

García-Barros, E., Munguira, M.L., Stefanescu, C. & Vives-Moreno, A. (2013). Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea. Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales-CSIC, Madrid.

Karger, D.N., Conrad, O., Böhner, J., Kawohl, T., Kreft, H., Soria-Auza, R.W., et al. (2017). Climatologies at high resolution for the earth’s land surface areas. Scientific data, 4(1), 1-20.

Marchi, M., Bucci, G., Iovieno, P. & Ray, D. (2024). ClimateDT: A Global Scale-Free Dynamic Downscaling Portal for Historic and Future Climate Data. Environments, 11(4), 82.

Vila, R., Stefanescu, C. & Sesma, J.M. (2018). Guia de les papallones diürnes de Catalunya. Lynx Edici. Barcelona. 

Contact

Pau ColomDepartment of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences, University of BarcelonaBiodiversity Research Institute (IRBio), Spain📧 pcolom@ub.edu ; pau.colom.montojo@gmail.com