Photo app and GBIF data of Austrian butterflies (Lepidoptera, Papilionoidea)

Data setsThis data base contain photo app and GBIF data on Austrian butterflies (Lepidoptera, Papilionoidea) of the families Hesperiidae, Lycaenidae, Nymphalidae, Papilionidae, Pieridae, and Riodinidae. The Austrian Red List of Butterflies (Höttinger & Pennerstorfer 2005) contains 215 recorded (nominal) species. We also included the invasive species Cacyreus marshalli, adding to a total of 216 species ever recorded in Austria. We adjusted the nomenclature to Huemer (2013). We note that this compilation lists 211 species with established status after eliminating alleged synonyms and misidentifications. GBIF Austria (https://www.gbif.at/home/) is the state data GBIF hub for Austrian faunistic records. As the GBIF set is fed by several local scientific partners, natural history museums, and experts, it comprises the most complete expert data on Austrian fauna available, but with taxonomic issues in particular of older data (i.e. pre-1980) are evident. The data contain 319,704 records stored for Austria. We selected 273,937 records, for which sample date and sample site at least at the Federal State level were available (Table 1). Records cover the time period 1802‒2023. Observation.org (below obs.org) is an EU-based platform for biodiversity citizen science and monitoring (https://observation.org/). Several tens of thousands citizen scientists and professional users contribute geo-referenced observations via a smartphone app; each observation becomes subsequently validated by an expert. We retrieved 54,040 single records contributed by 3246 users covering the years 2010–2023.iNaturalist (https://www.inaturalist.org/) is an US-based naturalist site founded in 1968 and hosting a large observation data base contributed by citizen scientists and amateur naturalists. Part of iNat data is contained in GBIF. The present data contain 30,571 single geo-referenced and dated records contributed by 252 users covering the years 2010–2023.Finally, we retrieved 301,072 single geo-referenced records (years 2016–2022, including 241 records since 2002) from the initiative Blühendes Österreich (English: Flowering Austria; https://www.bluehendesoesterreich.at/; below BO; Table 1). BO is a biodiversity and sustainability foundation hosting a Citizen Science project of faunal recording via a smartphone app with more than 20,000 users. The BO data do not overlap in record identity with the other data bases. All data were retrieved during the first two weeks of February 2024.