Background Herbivorous insects represent a major fraction of global biodiversity and the relationships they have established with their food plants range from strict specialists to broad generalists. Our knowledge of these relationships is of primary importance to basic (e.g. the study of insect ecology and evolution) and applied biology (e.g. monitoring of pest or invasive species) and yet remains very fragmentary and understudied. In Lepidoptera, caterpillars of families Saturniidae and Sphingidae are rather well known and considered to have adopted contrasting preferences in their use of food plants. The former are regarded as being rather generalist feeders, whereas the latter are more specialist. New information To assemble and synthesise the vast amount of existing data on food plants of Lepidoptera families Saturniidae and Sphingidae, we combined three major existing databases to produce a dataset collating more than 26,000 records for 1256 species (25% of all species) in 121 (67%) and 167 (81%) genera of Saturniidae and Sphingidae, respectively. This dataset is used here to document the level of polyphagy of each of these genera using summary statistics, as well as the calculation of a polyphagy score derived from the analysis of Phylogenetic Diversity of the food plants used by the species in each genus.

中文翻译：

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野生蚕蛾和天蛾的全球食用植物数据集及其在记录其毛虫多食性中的用途（鳞翅目：蚕科：土星科，鞘翅目）

背景 食草昆虫代表了全球生物多样性的主要部分，它们与其食用植物建立的关系范围从严格的专家到广泛的通才。我们对这些关系的了解对于基础（例如昆虫生态学和进化的研究）和应用生物学（例如害虫或入侵物种的监测）至关重要，但仍然非常零碎且研究不足。在鳞翅目中，土星科和鞘翅目科的毛虫是众所周知的，并且被认为在使用食用植物时采用了不同的偏好。前者被认为是相当通才的饲养者，而后者则更专业。新信息 为了收集和综合有关鳞翅目土星科和鞘翅目食用植物的大量现有数据，我们结合了三个主要的现有数据库，生成了一个数据集，该数据集整理了土星科和鞘氨醇科的 121 个（67%）和 167 个（81%）属的 1256 个物种（占所有物种的 25%）的 26,000 多条记录。该数据集用于使用汇总统计数据记录每个属的多噬水平，以及从分析每个属物种使用的食用植物的系统发育多样性得出的多噬分数计算。