Butterfly abundance data from lower mountain range regions in southwest Germany

The dataset contains abundance data of butterfly species and noctuid moths in five different Malaise trap types which were placed as a defined set each on a meadow and a forest clearing site in three regions of Germany: Hunsrueck (National Park Hunsrueck-Hochwald), Spessart (Rhine-Main-Observatory) and Steigerwald. Abundances of noctuid moths were recorded per size class. Butterfly data covers weeks from the end of May to the beginning of September 2020. The data was collected to perform a trap comparison between the Malaise trap types which were a large Townes trap with a white roof, a large Townes trap with a black roof, a smaller Townes trap with a black roof, a dark Bartak trap with a conventional capture bottle and a dark Bartak trap with an eclector bottle. Part of the specimen collected was used for DNA-metabarcoding. The other part was deposited in the specimen collection of the Environmental Campus Birkenfeld (Trier University of Applied Sciences). With our study, we aimed to reveal possible differences in butterfly species capture with different types of Malaise traps and the implications for total insect biomass of the samples.