1 WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF Davos Switzerland.
2 Climate Change, Extremes and Natural Hazards in Alpine Regions Research Centre CERC Davos Switzerland.
3 Department of Biology University of Patras Rio Greece.
4 Pyrenean Institute of Ecology (IPE-CSIC) Spanish National Research Council Zaragoza Spain.
5 School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology University of Adelaide Adelaide South Australia Australia.
6 Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ Halle Germany.
7 German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig Leipzig Germany.
8 Forest Research Institute - Hellenic Agricultural Organization Demeter Thessaloniki Greece.
9 Department of Biology Oklahoma State University Stillwater Oklahoma USA.
10 Department of Biology, Faculty of Science University of Mazandaran Babolsar Iran.
11 The University of Michigan Biological Station, University of Michigan Pellston Michigan USA.
12 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology University of Michigan Ann Arbor Michigan USA.
13 Institute of Biology Leipzig University Leipzig Germany.
14 Department of Life Sciences Imperial College London Ascot UK.
15 Biology Department Dawson College Montreal Quebec Canada.
16 Department of Biology Concordia University Montreal Quebec Canada.
17 Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences Pruhonice Czech Republic.
18 Institute of Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolution, Population Ecology University Jena Jena Germany.
19 Centre for Ecosystem Science, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences University of New South Wales Sydney New South Wales Australia.
20 Instituto de Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad de Talca Talca Chile.
21 Institute of Plant Sciences and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research University of Bern Bern Switzerland.
22 Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment Western Sydney University Penrith New South Wales Australia.
23 INRAE, Bordeaux Sciences Agro ISPA Villenave d'Ornon France.
24 State Key Laboratory of Herbage Improvement and Grassland Agro-Ecosystems, College of Pastoral Agriculture Science and Technology Lanzhou University Lanzhou China.
25 INRAE, Bordeaux Science Agro, ISVV SAVE Villenave d'Ornon France.
26 CONICET and Agencia de Extensión Rural Coronel Suárez EEA Cesáreo Naredo, INTA Coronel Suárez Provincia de Buenos Aires Argentina.
27 Laboratorio de Ecología Tropical y Servicios Ecosistémicos-EcoSs Lab, Departamento de Ciencias Biológicas y Agropecuarias Universidad Técnica Particular de Loj Loja Ecuador.
28 Alumni Biología-Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, San Cayetano Loja Ecuador.
29 Leibniz-Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change Bonn Germany.
30 Department of Global Change Ecology, Biocenter University of Würzburg Würzburg Germany.
31 Department of Botany, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences University of Tartu Tartu Estonia.
32 Research Centre for Ecological Change, Organismal and Evolutionary Biology Research Programme, Faculty of Environmental and Biological Sciences University of Helsinki Helsinki Finland.
33 State Key Laboratory of Herbage Improvement and Grassland Agro-Ecosystems, College of Ecology Lanzhou University Lanzhou China.
34 State Key Laboratory of Black Soils Conservation and Utilization, Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Changchun China.
35 Instituto de Ecología y Biodiversidad (IEB) Ñuñoa, Santiago Chile.
36 Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim Norway.
37 Centro de Recursos Naturales Renovables de la Zona Semiárida (CERZOS, CONICET/UNS) Bahía Blanca Argentina.
38 Departamento de Biología, Bioquímica y Farmacia UNS Bahía Blanca Argentina.
39 Department of Biosystems &

Plants are consumed by a variety of organisms, including herbivores and pathogens, which significantly impact plant biomass, diversity, community composition, and ecosystem functioning. While the impacts of vertebrate herbivores are well established, the effects of consumer groups such as insect herbivores, mollusks, and fungal pathogens on plant communities are less clear and remain understudied in many systems. Existing evidence of how they affect plant biomass, diversity, and community composition is mixed, and most studies have focused on individual consumer groups in isolation. However, different consumer groups interact with each other, directly or indirectly, in ways that alter their impacts on plants, and the consequences of these interactions for plant community structure and ecosystem function remain understudied. Further, consumer impacts vary across environmental gradients and likely depend on abiotic conditions such as climate, soil type, or elevation, and biotic conditions such as plant productivity, diversity, or community composition. Existing studies testing the impacts of invertebrate herbivores and fungal pathogens on plant communities differ substantially in methodology, making generalities across large scales difficult. This calls for experimental approaches that implement standardized protocols across many sites. Here, we introduce and report on the methodology of a novel global research network, The Bug-Network (BugNet), that implements standardized consumer-reduction experiments across 5 continents and 18 countries in diverse, herbaceous- or shrub-dominated ecosystems to investigate: (1) the influence of fungal pathogens, insect herbivores, and mollusks on plant diversity and ecosystem functioning, (2) interactions among these consumer groups, and (3) the abiotic and biotic drivers of context-dependent consumer impacts. BugNet aims to advance a predictive understanding of plant-consumer interactions in order to test fundamental ecological hypotheses and improve predictions of global change impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.