The diversity of insect herbivores has been discussed with the interaction with host plants. Several macroevolutionary scenarios are proposed; speciation via specialization on a subset of ancestral host repertoire (oscillation hypothesis); speciation driven by host-switching to novel host (musical-chairs hypothesis); and host-shift and adaptive radiation (adaptive radiation). Although several studies had been examined them by testing the relation between diet breadth and diversity, the prevalence is under debate because of incongruent results. Here, we compared these scenarios using data of 1,189 genera comprising eleven families in Lepidoptera. We calculated indices of herbivore species x plant family network for every herbivore genus, which allow more direct quantification of the interaction than using diet breadth. The relationships between network indices and species richness or diversification rate were analyzed for each family, respectively. Genera with more nested and/or less turnover networks tended to be specioise, suggesting the importance of specialization within a host repertoire rather than switching to novel plants. Otherwise, Pieridae and Nymphalidae showed the pattern of adaptive radiation. Although our results supported for the prevalence of the oscillation scenario but not for the musical-chairs scenario, other properties such as life-history traits may be necessary to explain the variety of the scenarios.