Dataset of butterfly monitoring in Sierra Nevada (Spain)

Data Records

The data in this sampling event resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 10,369 records.

2 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

How to cite

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Barea-Azcón J M (2021): Dataset of butterfly monitoring in Sierra Nevada (Spain). v1.2. Sierra Nevada Global Change Observatory. Andalusian Environmental Center, University of Granada, Regional Government of Andalusia. Dataset/Samplingevent. https://doi.org/10.15470/tc3gdq

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Sierra Nevada Global-Change Observatory (UGR-JA). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: d7a3df60-e856-438b-851d-74653ef6c0d2.  Sierra Nevada Global-Change Observatory (UGR-JA) publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF Spain.

Keywords

Butterflies; high Mediterranean mountain; Protected Areas; Sierra Nevada; global change.; Samplingevent

Contacts

Geographic Coverage

Sierra Nevada (SE Spain) is one of the southernmost highest mountain ranges of Europe. It comprises an elevation range from 270 to 3,492 m a.s.l. and it extends along 100 km from west to east in parallel to the Mediterranean coast line, with a notable increase of aridity towards the eastern sector. Sierra Nevada presents a notable environmental heterogeneity, not only in its elevational gradient, but also in its different orientations and in the west-east gradient. The five Mediterranean bioclimatic belts are represented here: thermo, meso, supra, oro and crioro-Mediterranean. A forest belt occupies good part at the middle and lower elevations and presents an uneven state of transformation, while certain extensions of holm oaks still persist (on siliceous environments and also on carbonate soils), relictic Pyrenean oak forests and some native pine forests of Pinus sylvestris and Pinus pinaster, the presence of more than 30,000 ha of reforestation pine forests is also noteworthy. Above the tree line there are 30,000 ha of typical mediterranean mountain scrubland mainly compounded by species of the genus Genista, Juniperus, Berberis and Hormatophila among others. On the upper belts, rocky landscapes defined by recent glacial events alternates with high mountain grasslands and 74 glacial lakes distributed in an elevation range situated between 2,600 and 3,100 m a.s.l. The high mountain area comprises more than 30 summits that reach an elevation above 3,000 m a.s.l. During more than the half of the year, these areas remain under a snow cover and this fact conditions a good part of the ecological processes there. The high mountain ecosystem of Sierra Nevada holds a huge number of plant and animal endemism, representing a hotspot within the mediterranean hotspot. Sierra Nevada hold some of the higher protections figures for a natural area in Spain and in Europe, so it was declared as a Natural Park since 1989 and as a National Park since 1999, is also designated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve (since 1986), as a Natura 2000 network site (since 2006) and holds the distinctive Green List awarded by the IUCN in recognition of good management practices.

Taxonomic Coverage

This dataset includes a total of 34,137 occurrence records of the order Lepidoptera, which compile the butterfly counts by species and section. In total, 101,424 individuals of butterflies were recorded since 2008, belonging to 102 species and 1 subspecies. There are 64 genera and 5 families represented in this dataset.

Temporal Coverage

Project Data

Since 2007, Sierra Nevada Global-Change Observatory has undergone an ambitious project promoted by the Environmental and Regional Planning Council of the Regional Government of Andalusia, with the scientific coordination of the University of Granada-Andalusian Environmental Centre (IISTA, Interuniversity Institute of Research of Earth Systems in Andalusia) and with the collaboration of the Spanish National Park Service, in order to develop a monitoring and information management program. The design of the monitoring program was based on the conceptual framework and the thematic categories proposed by the GLOCHAMORE initiative (GLObal CHAnge in MOuntain REgions http://mri.scnatweb.ch/en/projects/glochamore), under the auspices of UNESCO. This monitoring program is based on specific questions concerning the global-change impact, the functioning of the natural systems, and their foreseeable responses under the new scenarios of change. Monitoring methodologies were defined to evaluate both the state of the key ecological functions, such as the structure of the main ecosystems in Sierra Nevada, and the possible impact of global change on Sierra Nevada. Sierra Nevada Global-Change Observatory promotes the collaboration between the different teams belonging to various institutions (researchers from the University of Granada and other academic institutions at the national and international levels, as well as decision makers) in order to plan transversal work with integrative objectives.

The personnel involved in the project:

Sampling Methods

Sampling method consists of a walk transect based on the method proposed by Pollar and Yates (1994) that is the most widely used method in this type of studies. This method consists in counting every butterfly along the transect within a 5 meters band at each side of the observer and also 5 meters above and ahead. Transects average length were 1,900 meters (300 to 3,270 m). The butterflies were mainly visually identified, but a butterfly net has been used in the cases when the visual identification was not possible. Every captured butterfly was released at the same place where it had been catched once it was identified. All the identifications were made at the species levels except for some individuals that only could be identified at Genus level.

Method step description:

1. The original database is stored in the Information System of Sierra Nevada Global-Change Observatory.
2. The dataset was standardised to the Darwin Core structure (Wieczorek et al., 2012) as sampling event data. It contains, specifically: 10,369 records of events (1,725 parent events and 8,644 child events), 34,137 records of occurrences, and 4,852 records of associated measurements (wind, cloud cover, air temperature). The parent events refer to the transect sampling whereas the child events correspond to each section sampling (transects are divided into sections, and butterflies are counted separately in each section). The Darwin Core elements included in the Event Core are: eventID, parentEventID, modified, language, institutionCode, ownerInstitutionCode, datasetName, license, continent, country, countryCode, verbatimLocality, eventDate, year, month, day, eventTime, samplingProtocol, sampleSizeValue, sampleSizeUnit, minimumElevationInMeters, maximumElevationInMeters, habitat, decimalLatitude, decimalLongitude, geodeticDatum, georeferenceRemarks, footprintWKT. For the Occurrence Extension are: occurrenceID, catalogNumber, collectionCode, eventID, eventDate, recordedBy, organismQuantity, organismQuantityType, lifeStage, basisOfRecord, scientificName, taxonRank, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, specificEpithet, infraSpecificEpithet, scientificNameAuthorship. For the Measurement or Fact Extension table, the Darwin Core elements included are: measurementID, eventID, measurementType, measurementValue, measurementUnit, measurementMethod.
3. The resulting dataset was published through the Integrated Publishing Toolkit of the Spanish node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) (http://ipt.gbif.es).

Bibliographic Citations

1. Maes, D., Wiemers, M., Verovnik, R., Warren, M., Brosens, D., & Desmet, P. (2020). National checklists and red lists for European butterflies [Data set]. Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO). https://doi.org/10.15468/YE7WHJ https://doi.org/10.15468/YE7WH
2. Olivares, F.J., Barea-Azcón, J.M., Pérez-López, F.J., Tinaut, J.A. y Henares, I. (2012). Mariposas diurnas de Sierra Nevada. Consejería de Medio Ambiente, Junta de Andalucía.
3. Pollard, E. & Yates, T. J. (1994). Monitoring butterflies for ecology and conservation. Chapman & Hall, London.
4. Sevilleja, C.G., van Swaay, C.A.M., Bourn, N., Collins, S., Settele, J., Warren, M.S., Wynhoff, I. and Roy, D.B. (2019). Butterfly Transect Counts: Manual to monitor butterflies. Report VS2019.016, Butterfly Conservation Europe & De Vlinderstichting/Dutch Butterfly Conservation, Wageningen.
5. Van Swaay, C.A.M., Brereton, T., Kirkland, P. & Warren, M.S. (2012) Manual for Butterfly monitoring. Report VS2012.010, De Vlinderstichting/Dutch Butterfly Conservation, Butterfly Conservation UK & Butterfly Conservation Europe, Wageningen.
6. Wieczorek, J., Bloom, D., Guralnick, R., Blum, S., Döring, M., Giovanni, R., Robertson, T., & Vieglais, D. (2012). Darwin core: An evolving community-developed biodiversity data standard. PLoS ONE, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0029715 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0029715
7. Wiemers, M., Balletto, E., Dincă, V., Fric, Z. F., Lamas, G., Lukhtanov, V., Munguira, M. L., van Swaay, C. A. M., Vila, R., Vliegenthart, A., Wahlberg, N., & Verovnik, R. (2018). An updated checklist of the European Butterflies (Lepidoptera, Papilionoidea). ZooKeys, 811, 9-45. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.811.28712 https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.811.28712

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