Data from: Synthesizing the relationships between food web structure and robustness

Species are being lost from ecosystems, and for more than 20 years, ecologists have sought to understand the extent to which these species losses trigger secondary extinctions—i.e., the additional loss of species following lost resources or key interactions—measured as robustness. In particular, ecologists aim to identify generalizable rules that explain which types of food webs are more or less robust to secondary extinctions. Food web structure, or the patterns formed by species and their interactions, has been extensively studied as a potential factor that influences robustness. However, there has not yet been a review of our understanding of the relationships between food web structure and robustness. We systematically reviewed 28 studies to identify the relationships between food web structures and robustness, and how the conclusions depend on methodological differences. More than 20 food web structures were reported to determine robustness, but the shape and direction of these relationships varied based on methodology. While there are not yet generalizable patterns in structure-robustness relationships, we find that methodological differences across studies underscored conflicting results, impeding the potential for generality. Based on our findings, we propose recommendations to improve these methods and identify future research questions.