A global database of butterfly species native distributions

Butterflies represent a diverse group of insects, playing key ecosystem roles such as pollination and their larval form in herbivory. Despite their importance, comprehensive global distribution data for butterfly species is lacking. This lack of comprehensive global data has hindered many large-scale questions in ecology, evolutionary biology, and conservation at regional and global scales. Here, I use an integrative workflow that combines occurrence records, alpha hull polygons, species’ dispersal capacity, natural habitat and environmental variables within a framework of species distribution models to generate species-level native distributions for butterflies at a global scale in contemporary period. The database releases native range maps for 10,372 extant species of butterflies at a spatial grain resolution of 5 arcmin (~10 km). This database has the potential to allow unprecedented large-scale analyses in ecology, biogeography, and conservation of butterflies. The maps are available in the WGS84 coordinate reference system (EPSG:4326 code) and stored as vector polygons in GEOPACKAGE format for maximum compression, allowing easy data manipulation using a standard computer. I additionally provide each species’ spatial raster. All maps and R scripts are open access and available for download at Dryad, and are guided by FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data principle. By making this data available to the scientific community, I aim to advance the sharing of biological data to stimulate more comprehensive research in ecology, biogeography, and conservation of butterflies.