Supplementary Information

Abstract

We combined published food webs from [1], [2], and [3]. Of the 358 food webs available 2 from [1], 58 were rejected because their original source was unpublished or could not be 3 retrieved. We further eliminated 13 source or sink webs (which describe feeding links 4 flowing from or to a particular resource or top predator rather than the interactions of an 5 entire community), 8 plant-pollinator webs, 33 host-parasitoid webs, and 2 networks de6 scribing competitive interactions. Additionally, we eliminated 2 webs describing inferred 7 interactions in an extinct community, 2 webs describing compartments rather than par8 ticular species, 11 “generalised schemes” that were not based on direct field data, and 4 9 webs where it was not clear which of several described study sites were used to construct 10 the food web (and therefore the latitude of the food web could not be included). This left 11 us with 226 webs from [1]. 12