This site hosts a comprehensive database of the traits of European and North African (Maghreb) butterflies (25 main traits subdivided into 217 states x 542 taxa). Nomenclature is consistent with Wiemers et al. (2018) but we have included the species of the Maghreb and those few sub-species which have very divergent traits from the nominate species.
Trait definitions are available here. We provide the data in two forms, as the State Table, coded as raw binary and continuous variables and as the Traits Table, recoded into multinomial and continuous variables. We do not include biotope occupancy as a trait in our database as life-history traits, basic morphology, resource-use and behaviour are good predictors of biotope occupancy in butterflies.
The database provides a critical resource for improving our understanding of fundamental processes such as how traits define species co-occurrences and their responses to environmental change, their spatial dynamics, and their associations with vegetation structures. A full descriptor of the data is given in Middleton-Welling et al. (2020).
The dataset, whilst comprehensive, has some missing information on some traits for some species, especially for those which are highly restricted in their distributions. We welcome additional data and comments on the current dataset.
We can be contacted via:
butterflytraits@gmail.com