New Distributional Data of Butterflies in the Middle of the Mediterranean Basin: An Area Very Sensitive to Expected Climate Change

Butterflies are known to be very sensitive to environmental changes. Species distribution is modified by climate warming with latitudinal and altitudinal range shifts, but also environmental perturbations modify abundance and species composition of communities. Changes can be detected and described when large datasets are available, but unfortunately only for few Mediterranean countries they were created. The butterfly fauna of the Mediterranean Basin is very sensitive to climate warming and there is an urgent need of large datasets to investigate and mitigate risks such as local extinctions or new pest outbreaks. The fauna of Calabria, the southernmost region of peninsular Italy, is composed also of European species having here their southern range. The aim of this dataset paper is to increase and update the knowledge of butterfly distribution in a region very sensitive to climate warming that can become an early-warning area. 1. Introduction Large and updated datasets are fundamental tools for investigating the effects of climatic changes and environmental perturbations on biodiversity, mainly of sensitive taxa such as butterflies [1]. Butterflies are known to react to climate warming with latitudinal and altitudinal range shifts [2], but these changes are detectable only if distributional datasets are available. In Europe, some countries (Belgium, Finland, Germany, Ireland, The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and UK) adopted a standardized butterfly monitoring scheme from several years [3], but in the Mediterranean areas only the Catalan Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (http://www.catalanbms.org/) and the Suivi Temporel des Rhopalocères de France (http://vigienature.mnhn.fr/page/suivi-temporel-des-rhopaloceres-de-france) are working. Models of species distribution in face of changes due to climate warming [4] are based on the actual distribution of species and future scenarios can be distorted when a model is based on few data. The southern range of the European distribution of butterflies is largely underinvestigated and only few data are available for southern Italy, an area with a fauna very sensitive to climate changes [5]. In order to detect changes, it is important to investigate the distribution of both common and rare species, but bibliographic sources only rarely provide punctual and useful data of the former causing an important lack of information. Many data can be collected within private and public collections. This is an expensive procedure, but interesting data can be obtained on the past distribution of common species. In Italy, the