Reorganizing Butterfly–Plant Interaction Networks Under Environmental Change: Conservation and Ecological Sustainability

Environmental change is reshaping ecological communities, yet conservation efforts often continue to focus on protecting species rather than the interactions that sustain biodiversity. Butterfly–plant interaction networks include well-studied systems that are an important component of biodiversity and can be foundational for examining how ecological relationships respond to climate change, habitat alteration, species introductions, restoration, and conservation management. Most studies of these interactions rely on observational records, plant use data, pollen load evidence, and historical specimens to reconstruct how butterflies use plant communities and how these relationships vary across environmental contexts. However, these studies remain scattered across disparate ecosystems, and network data have not been integrated to explain how butterfly–plant interactions are reorganized under environmental change. Here, we synthesize the literature to evaluate how butterfly–plant interactions are reshaped by environmental change in the United States. The evidence indicates that the most impactful environmental change drivers include: increases in temperature, drought, extreme weather, habitat fragmentation, land use change, species introductions, and conservation interventions. These environmental change parameters alter butterfly–plant interactions through partner shifts, temporal mismatch, reduced plant resource diversity, altered plant availability, weakening of specialized links, and increased reliance on generalist plant species. Strong shifts in butterfly–plant interactions may occur even when butterfly and plant species remain present and even abundant, making interaction loss an early signal of ecological change. A network perspective is useful because it can reveal whether specialized or rare butterfly–plant links persist or whether environmental stress shifts communities toward interactions in which butterflies utilize fewer widely used plant resources or plants are reliant on fewer species of butterflies. By integrating observational evidence, historical specimen-based pollen records, restoration contexts, and network analysis, this review provides an interaction-centered framework for understanding and conserving butterfly–plant relationships in changing environments, with implications for ecological sustainability.