3.2) Geographic, land use, climatic or taxonomic trends and biases
Research was conducted across 35 countries, with most research confined to the Northern Hemisphere and the cool temperate ecosystems of China and Europe (Figure 2). Tropical and sub-tropical grasslands, such as the cerrados and savannas of South America, Africa and Australia were significantly underrepresented. As these ecosystems make up~50% of grasslands across the globe (Dixon et al., 2014), there is considerable room for improvement in our understanding of plant trait-herbivore interactions in global grassland systems. Poor representation of the Southern Hemisphere is a trend common within ecological research (Carlucci et al., 2020; Weidlich et al., 2020). Several studies have also highlighted the need for greater ecological research within tropical ecosystems (Clarke et al., 2017; Wilson et al., 2016).