Distribution Atlas of Butterflies in Europe

by O. Kudrna, A. Harpke, K. Lux, J. Pennerstorfer, O. Schweiger, J. Settele and M. Wimers. Halle : Gesellschaft für Schmetterlingsschutz, 2011. 576 pp. ISBN 978-3-938249-70-3. This book is the product of an ongoing mission. Its driving force is the lepidopterist Otakar Kudrna, who in 1996 planned a project known as Mapping European Butterflies (MEB). The outcome was the publication, in 2002, of MEB-1, a printed atlas of butterfly distribution maps. MEB-1 was conceived as a source of taxonomic and zoogeographic information, but the decline of European butterflies caused Dr Kudrna to change the underlying purpose of the project to that of conservation which, he noted, needed comprehensive distribution maps. The present volume, MEB-2, is a fully revised and rewritten version of MEB-1. Most of the book is composed of annotated distribution maps of each of the 441 species of European butterflies, one page per species. The maps are preceded by some introductory text describing the background to MEB and the methodology used. There is a concluding discussion in the final pages. Encouraged by the success of MEB-1, Kudrna worked with some close collaborators for MEB-2 to co-author this book, all with particular and appropriate skills. Added to this core team was a remarkable network of data contributors, who provided the 65,000 records that populate the database from which the computer-generated maps were generated. Quite apart from the effort of coordinating and quality controlling the records, much work was needed to standardise the data. A particularly tricky task was to import valuable distribution data from existing paper-based maps.