Search terms and combinations
Searches were conducted in English and using the default date range for each database/ search engine (1980s to present for SCOPUS and Web of Science (WOS); 1970s onward for Google Scholar). To ensure a comprehensive search, we selected search terms related to herbivores and herbivory, plant functional traits and grasslands or other grass dominated systems (e.g., grassy woodlands) or the species that occur in these systems. The following search terms were utilised in each of the online databases and searches.
TS=((herbivor* OR graz* OR brows * OR feed* OR forag*) AND (“plant trait*” OR “functional trait*” OR “leaf trait*” OR “foliar trait*” OR secondary* OR defens* OR defenc*) AND (grass* OR grassland* OR “grassy woodland*” OR meadow * OR pasture* OR prairie* OR monocot* OR graminoid* OR pampa* OR savanna* OR savannah OR campos OR cerrado OR espinal* OR fynbos OR veldt* OR veld* OR llanos OR downs OR tundra* OR pustaz) )
Using the field tag function in SCOPUS and WOS these terms were searched within the title, abstract and key words of these databases.
Search results from databases were exported to Endnote citation manager (Clarivate 20.3) and cleaned for duplicates. To check for additional results not within these databases, the first 150 papers (sorted by relevance) were exported from Google Scholar.