DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.25037645.v2
title: Occurrence records of tropical Asian butterflies: 1970 - 2024

description: Occurrence records of tropical Asia's butterflies collated from online databases and published literature. This dataset consists of 724,247* occurrence records for 3,591* species. *NOTE: 457 records are under embargo and have been omitted from this file until the embargo ends.Methods:We collected occurrence records for tropical Asian Papilionoidea (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae, Papilionidae, Lycaenidae, Pieridae, Hesperiidae, Riodinidae)(-11.426 – 35.64 N, 67.588 – 174.990 E) for the years 1970-present. Records were extracted from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility on 15 April 2024. We included only presence records derived from human observation, preserved specimens, material samples, or literature, provided they had associated coordinates. We omitted all records with &gt;100,000 m coordinate uncertainty, so-called “fuzzy” taxon matches, and records for which the scientific name was missing or incomplete, unless nomenclature could be extracted using a BOLD identifier (boldsystems.org/). This resulted in a final number of GBIF records = 651,285.We also extracted data from the B2D2 Database of Butterflies for Borneo provided by JKH/the Darwin Initiative (n = 19,417) and a dataset for Bangladesh provided by SC (Chowdhury et al. 2021) (n = 18,278), and unpublished datasets from coauthors. To fill geographic gaps when all of these records were plotted, we conducted targeted searches of the published literature on Google Scholar (details below), resulting in an additional 22,632 records. Pre-1970 data were omitted where possible from all sources. Final binomial synonym harmonization, validation, and authority assignment were conducted by DJL using a taxonomic reference prepared by Gerardo Lamas (Lamas, 2015. Catalogue of the butterflies (Papilionidae). Available from the author.). Family names were matched to GBIF. The resulting database consists of 724,247* records for 3,591* species. For geographic regions with relatively few GBIF records (e.g., China, Myanmar, Thailand) and for species with &lt; 10 records, we conducted targeted literature searches using Google Scholar in English, simplified Chinese, and traditional Chinese (genus OR genus + species + country name). For all species records in published sources, we extracted coordinates, locality name, locality type (e.g., exact coordinates, city, national park, island, or province), country, and year of record (where available). If exact coordinates were not provided by the source, we used Google Earth Pro (v7.3.6.9345) to estimate the locality centroid for any record provided at the province level or below (e.g., national park or city). For records from islands ≤ 100 km in length or diameter (e.g, localities within the Philippines and Indonesia), we estimated the island or archipelago centroid. If a range of coordinates was provided (e.g., records from The Butterflies of Vietnam), coordinates within the range were chosen haphazardly by selecting a point within the range provided on Google Earth Pro. Data sources for all records are provided in the <i>reference </i>column.<br>