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).