Sample details for 306,220 Lepidoptera records from the Federal State of Salzburg (Austria)Lepidoptera records from the Federal State of Salzburg (Austria) 1900-2022 within and outside protected areas

We used an updated long-term data set of Lepidoptera records (butterflies and macro-moths) from the federal state of Salzburg (northern Austria) that is stored in the entomological collection of the “Haus der Natur”, Museum of Natural Sciences in Salzburg (https://www.hausdernatur.at/en/; complete raw data in (Ulrich et al., 2026)). This data set contains 306,220 verified records of 1,595 butterfly and macro-moth species (incl. Tortricidae), and also 10,743 records of micro-moths from 613 species collected at 23,746 single sample sites. Records span the years 1900‒2022 and cover a large altitudinal gradient (380‒3105 m asl.). They were sampled and verified by trained entomologists (P.G., pers. comm.). Here, we use 295,477 records from these 1,595 species since 1950. Summary data for each butterfly and macro-moth family and species are provided in the supplementary material, Tables S1, S2, S3. Tortricidae are commonly subsumed under the micro-moths. Here, we included the family in our analysis due to its high representation in the records. All other micro-moth families were not considered due to insufficient coverage.Austria has several categories of nature protection. Strict protection is guaranteed by Nature reserves (Naturschutzgebiete), National Parks (Nationalparks), European Protected Areas (Europaschutzgebiete), and Special Protection Areas (Sonderschutzgebiete). We compiled data from 45 such PAs from SAGISOnline (https://service.salzburg.gv.at/ogd/client/). They comprise 20.4 % of the area of the state of Salzburg (Table S4, Fig. 1). About 63 % of PA area cover mountains above 2,000 m asl., only 3 % of area is located below 1000 m asl. The Hohe Tauern National Parks (mostly located above 2,000 m a.s.l.) comprise more than half of total PA area considered in this study (805,5 km2).