This dataset includes 1131 interactions recorded in five localities of rocky outcrop grasslands in the Espinhaço mountain range in the state of Minas Gerais. These interactions form a network with 198 plant species in 15 tribes of the Asteraceae, and 99 herbivore species belonging to four families of Diptera and Lepidoptera, all of which have flowerhead-feeding larvae that were reared from samples of their host plants.

We used a large data set on endophagous herbivore insects that breed in Asteraceae flowerheads, reared out from plants collected over eight years in four regions in Brazil – montane grasslands in the Espinhaço range. In this region, 5 localities were sampled more than once and in different seasons. We followed the plant sampling and insect rearing procedures described in Prado et al. (2002): in each locality, we inspected an average of four sites with a minimum distance of 500m from each other, and sampled capitula of all flowering Asteraceae species from different developmental stages, from those bearing young flowers to those with mature achenes. The number of capitula varied according to their size and the availability of the plant at each site, with most samples standardized to 500 to 1000 mL of fresh volume. Flowerheads were kept in plastic vials covered with a mesh cap to await adult emergence. After 15 days without further insect emergence, rearing was concluded, usually six to eight weeks after collection.

The sampling unit in the data set is a population of a given Asteraceae species in a site, and each entry is a recorded interaction, for which we have both plant and herbivore identity, location and number of reared individuals. The data set comprises 1131 interactions among insects from four families in two orders: Diptera (Tephritidae and Agromyzidae), and Lepidoptera (Tortricidae and Pterophoridae).

Prado, P.I., Lewinsohn, T.M., Almeida, A.M., Norrbom, A.L., Buys, B.D., Macedo, A.C., et al. (2002). The fauna of Tephritidae (Diptera) from capitula of Asteraceae in Brazil. Proc. Entomol. Soc. Washingt., 104, 1007–1028.

The files contained in this database can be opened in softwares commonly used for data analysis, such as Excel, R, Python, etc.