Study sites
We performed a geographically-coordinated experiment simulating the presence of ecosystem-engineering structures built by leaf-rolling caterpillars on plants. The experiment was replicated in 2017-2019 in 52 sites across an 11,790 km latitudinal gradient (45.8° S to 60.2° N) and elevation spanning from 5 to 2900 m above sea level, comprising diverse types of biomes, including tropical and temperate forests, xeric shrubland (caatingas), savannas etc. We considered our sites spatially independent, as 94% of them were at least 500 km apart from each other. A detailed description of the sites, including environment and plant features, is provided in Table S1.