Quantitative data from six years (2013-2018) of light trap sampling of macromoths (Lepidoptera) in Mt. Hallasan National Park, South Korea

Abstract

This paper presents the results of long-term monitoring of macromoth communities in Mt. Hallasan National Park, South Korea. This mountain shows an altitudinal gradient of vegetation from evergreen deciduous to boreal trees, harbouring more than 550 species of vascular plants. The goal of this project was to investigate the changes in moth assemblages along the altitudinal gradient in this mountain ecosystem. We monitored macromoth communities at 11 sites in Mt. Hallasan National Park from 2013 to 2018, during which time moths were collected once a month from May to October, using an ultraviolet bucket trap. The generated dataset, which represented 587 species and 13,249 individuals from 14 families, can be adopted to establish a baseline for development of a network-orientated database to assess temporal and spatial changes of moths in temperate and tropical forests. This is the first long-term sampling-event dataset on macromoth assemblages in changing vegetation from evergreen deciduous to boreal tree zones, conducted in Mt. Hallasan National Park, the national park at the highest elevation and located on the largest volcanic island in South Korea. The aim of this study was to provide a description and a link to published data in the format of a peer-reviewed journal and to provide recognition of the effort in a scholarly article (based on data paper definition published at https://www.gbif.org/en/data-papers).