Data sources

The izeltlabuak.hu (www.izeltlabuak.hu) webpage provides a platform where amateur naturalists, nature photographers and researchers can share their data about arthropods of Hungary with one another. The website allows people to record detection data and these data can be confirmed by the contributing professionals. Observations submitted by non-professionals can be useful for research. This database is publicly available. More than 200,000 occurrence data concerning 13,701 species are currently recorded on the site, making it one of the largest Hungarian databases dealing with biological data collection and a valuable source of biology data for researchers.

The Hangya, hangyafarm Facebook group (www.facebook.com/groups/hangyaszat/) was formed on 24 July 2015 and it is now the largest Hungarian Facebook group dealing with ants (i.e. it has the most members). Currently, the group has more than 1,780 members. It mainly focuses on ant keeping, ant species and formicariums, including advice, ant determination, important information and interesting photos and videos. Data uploaded on these Hungarian groups do not necessarily show Hungarian samples only, so by examining all the uploaded data, new occurrences can also be found abroad.