A comprehensive dataset of published records of Leptodirini (Coleoptera, Leiodidae) from the North-western Balkans

In Europe, the beetle tribe Leptodirini (Coleoptera, Leiodidae) reaches its highest diversity in southern parts of the continent, where this predominantly subterranean group developed into one of the largest subterranean radiations in the World. Within this belt, encompassing Iberian Peninsula, Italian Preapls and Balkan Peninsula, the highest species diversity is reached in the North-western Balkan’s Dinaric Karst. Ever since the scientific description of the first subterranean beetle species, Leptodirus hochenwartii Schmidt, 1832 in the North-western Dinarides, numerous discoveries and publications accumulated up to present. These records have been systematically gathered in the Slovenian SubBioLab’s database SubBioDB; however, they were previously not publicly available. Herein, we present the dataset on Western Balkan’s Leptodirini and provide some of its basic characteristics. We present the first comprehensive dataset of published records of the tribe Leptodirini in the North-western Balkans, covering primarily the Dinaric Karst and adjacent areas of the Southern Calcareous Alps and the Albanides. The dataset includes 5,535 records compiled from 333 literature sources representing 334 species with 176 subspecies. All records were georeferenced with the highest possible spatial precision. Using published data, we provide checklists of species and subspecies for included countries, a consolidated bibliography of all publications containing Leptodirini records, spatial maps highlighting the areas of highest taxa richness and an overview of the number of records, sites and range sizes for each species and subspecies across the study area. This dataset provides a foundation for future research and sampling campaigns in the region, as well as a spatially-explicit resource for investigating the diversity and distribution of Leptodirini in Europe’s largest karst area.