Biodiversity occurrence records are the foundation for research in applied and theoretical biodiversity studies. Even though aggregators like GBIF serve such data in large quantities, major gaps and biases exists. To address these gaps, through citizen science approach, here we investigate butterfly images on Flickr contributed by the broader community as rich potential source of data. Specifically, we investigate the quantity of records existing, and the quality of identifications for swallowtail butterflies. We queried for 569 species of Papilionidae butterflies on Flickr and found more than 60 thousand records of 355 species, as compared to close to 250 thousand records available on GBIF. We explored these data by developing a website and presenting photographs with associated metadata to select experts, to check the accuracy of the identifications provided on Flickr. This method may be utilized for flora and fauna which can be identified using photographs and are interesting enough for citizen to photograph and share on social networking sites. Â
