Morphological, Spectra and CO1 data of Australian Butterflies
Butterflies have become a model system for studying the evolution of colour, due to their complex patterns that contain visible (VIS) and ultraviolet (UV) light, which can be perceived by conspecifics and predators. Many studies source data from publicly available images, however most of these images only consider the visible spectrum of light and not the UV spectrum. Including this information is crucial for understanding the evolution of morphological and behavioural traits of butterflies to their environment. Here we provide highly standardized calibrated images (VIS and UV) of over 4,000 individuals from 16 different communities of butterflies in Australia across different climates and urbanization levels that spans over 2,500 km. The dataset contains at least one individual of 125 different species, which constitutes more than one quarter of the Australian butterfly diversity. In addition to photographs, we provide spectral measurements for butterfly wings for at least one of each included species and sex, and Cytochrome Oxidase subunit 1 (CO1) sequences for 1,500 individuals. All these data are easily accessible in Dryad and through an R package that simplifies the download of subsets of the database. This database will be of use to evolutionary biologists and ecologists interested in phenotypic variation.