This dataset contains the raw data of questionnaire named “Original data” under the file “Questionnaire_data__butterfly_wing_color_brightness_and_contrast.xlsx”, that is the responses of local Dai people to the twenty questions (Questions were indexed as the abbreviation of the categories from BK1 to AK5. See the second column on sheet“proportion”). Original data was used to do Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity in SPSS 17.0, and Confirmatory factory analysis (CFA) in SPSS Amos Graphics (see supplementary materials in Yang et al, “Biased local ecological knowledge of butterfly diversity provided by the ethnic minority in Southwest China's biodiversity hotspot").

The file named “butterfly_images.rar” is the digital images of butterfly which were used to measure the wingspan, wing color brightness and contrast. These data were devoted to analyses the divergency between the butterflies recognised or not by local Dai people stored in the xlsx file named “Wing color brightness data”, “Wing color contrast data” and “Wing span data”.

CSV Files named “Ak1 to HI2” are the response of local Dai people to the questionnaire. These files were used to do cumulative link mixed models (CLMM) to test whether gender and age affect response patterns of the individual questions. Relevant R code to CLMM was named as “CLMM. R”. There questionnaire data were also used to do chi_square test (see detail in supplementary materials in Yang et al, “Biased local ecological knowledge of butterfly diversity provided by the ethnic minority in Southwest China’s biodiversity hotspot”), relevant R code to chi-square was named as “Chi-square”.

The data related to demographic difference and proportion of local respondents, the results of CLMM and Chi-square tests were also stored in the “Questionnaire_data__butterfly_wing_color_brightness_and_contrast.xlsx”.

Main results: 1) over 70% of them generally agreed with the importance of butterfly conservation, but a large proportion of respondents did not agree that they know about ecological and cultural significance of butterfly conservation. 2) gender and age biases for the issues related to cultural significance of butterflies and the causes of butterfly declines. 3) A total of 23 respondents said that they were “knowledgeable” about local butterflies and selected 45 and 15 species as “familiar” and “declining”, respectively. These species were, however, taxonomically (i.e., none of Lycaenidae and Hesperiidae species were selected) and morphologically biased (larger and more colorful butterfly species).

The questionnaire dataset are collect from local Dai respondents. These dataset were used to do cumulative link mixed models (CLMM) to test whether gender and age influenced response patterns of the individual questions.

The butterflies images came from the specimens which are storing in forest canopy ecological group in Xishuangbanna tropical botanical garden. These data were used to test the butterfly knowledge of local Dai people, which were further analyses to see the morphological divergenct (T-test).

The questionnaire was devided five categories related to the conservation awareness and perception of the butterflies: basic knowledge about butterflies (BK), perspectives on changes in local butterfly diversity (BD), knowledge about human and environmental impacts on butterfly diversity (HI), knowledge about cultural significance of butterflies (CS), awareness and knowledge about butterfly conservation (AK).

The respondents were asked to give a five-grade scales ranging from 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (unknown), 4 (agree) and 5 (strongly agree) in the questionnaire. The ages of the respondents were grouped into youth (15-22 years old), younger-adult (23-45 years old) and older-adult (45-65 years old) and signed as 1 to 3 in the dataset. Villages also signed as 1 to 5.

There is a butterfly species Neurosigma siva with NA values among wingspan, wing color brightness and contrast dataset because that specimen was not measured as the specimen was not available in our collection.