New Insights Into the Distribution of Australian Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea) Provided by Citizen Science

Abstract

Butterflies are one of Australia's most popular and well-studied invertebrate groups. Much butterfly research in the country is either led or supported by amateur entomologists and citizen scientists, and yet despite this, the recent and dramatic increase in the volume of publicly accessible citizen science butterfly observations has received relatively little research attention. Citizen science data are increasingly being used by analysts to better understand many aspects of the ecology and conservation of various species, and this paper aims to highlight the importance of such data in advancing our knowledge of Australian butterflies. In particular, data from the iNaturalist platform are analysed to identify new insights into the distribution of Australian butterflies, with these insights put into the wider context of butterfly research in Australia. Nearly 300 000 observations referring to 393 species (> 85% of the total Australian butterfly fauna) are recorded in the iNaturalist dataset; likely range extensions are identified for 84 species, range expansions for 17 and extralimital vagrants for 41. These results reaffirm the incompleteness of our current knowledge of butterfly distributions in Australia and demonstrate the significant potential of citizen science in addressing such knowledge gaps.