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Macroglossum stellatarum, a featured picture by IronChris on 27 Sep 2006.

Title

WikiProject Lepidoptera

The aim of this WikiProject is to set out broad suggestions about how to organize data in the articles relating to Butterflies and Moths. We also hope to encourage the development of important stubs and articles following these suggestions which are not obligatory except in the case of WikiProject Lepidoptera Article Guidelines. These guidelines are being formulated as policy to give a more uniform look, feel and organisation to WP Lepidoptera articles and are in the process of being developed through discussion and consensus on the Project talk page. In the case of these guidelines (when formulated) editors are expected to follow with exceptions to be discussed on the Project talk page before implementation.



Parentage

This WikiProject is an offshoot of WikiProject Tree of Life

WikiProject Science
WikiProject Biology
WikiProject Tree of Life
WikiProject Animals
WikiProject Arthropods
WikiProject Lepidoptera



Participants

To become a member, just add yourself at the end of this list.

Emperor Gum Moth Opodiphthera eucalypti, (Family Saturniidae) a featured picture by Fir0002 on 19 Sep 2005.

WikiProject Guidelines

As of date, the following guidelines have been established with consensus after reasoned debate in WikiProject Lepidoptera and should be followed. In case of exceptions please discuss first on the talk page.

Format for article

A suggested format for articles on Lepidoptera is given in the Article formats page.

See Commander Limenitis procris and Imperial Moth Eacles imperialis as an example of a typical species account.

Some species have extremely little information and are virtually little more than stubs, so most of these headings are deleted. See Imperial Apollo Parnassius imperator augustus as an example. Such species in a single genus probably would merit consolidation in the near future, as per the accepted usage.

In some cases, the species has additional interesting information which merits separate sections and sub-sections. These are issues such as taxonomy, polymorphy, mimicry, ant-association, migration or any such feature characteristic to that species and warranting a detailed treatment by itself. Hence additional headings are provided on an as-required basis. The sequence of headings, sections and sub-sections may also be changed to represent the information in the best and most convenient manner possible.

See Plain Tiger Danaus chrysippus and Common Mormon Papilio polytes as such examples.

Categorisation of articles

Draft guidelines for categorisation will help you to categorise the articles sensibly and consistently.

Goals

One key aim is to set an extremely high standard of writing quality and user-friendliness in this project.

Use of media and level of detail

The articles try to display as many relevant images as possible. The aim being to be as useful and encyclopedic as is necessary. We would like to have, and in some cases, we have been able to obtain photos of :

  • Adult (imago), egg, larva (or caterpillar) and Chrysalis (pupa or coccoon).
  • Male and female forms, UP and UN. Polymorphic forms. Mimic forms.
  • Butterflies and moths involved in activitites such as nectar-sipping, mud-puddling, mating, basking, migration etc.
  • Comparison of photos between models and mimics.
  • Photos of any other aspect of natural history relevant such as host-plant or parasites.
  • Drawings or illustrations from old books, paintings or sculpture.

In the future we would like to attach video clips, list of common and vernacular names, distribution maps and comparison galleries to ease species identification.

Tasks

Task Set 1 - Get the basic framework up

  • Prepare viable checklists for each family of Lepidoptera.
  • Get the taxonomic check done through various resources:
    • LEPINDEX ([1]). (N.B., LepIndex is not 100% accurate (though very close to it!), nor very up-to-date. Where recent authoritative publications post date the taxonomy in LepIndex, use and cite them.)
    • Marrku Savela's site - Lepidoptera and some other life forms.(N.B. Incomplete and incorrect at places, a collection of disparate data; good for a quick and dirty overview).
    • Tree of Life Web site (TOLWeb) (Basically lists of species in genera. Suitable for seeing which species are presently considered valid by the panel of experts for that family/subfamily/genera).
  • Place the stubs.
  • Prepare articles to extent possible up to the required standard.
  • Place images suitably captioned.

Task Set 2 - Get value-added activities into place

  • Prepare Wikicards on various species of Lepidoptera.
  • Prepare Wikicourse on Lepidoptera, butterflies or moths.
  • Prepare regional checklists, list of foodplants etc.
  • Prepare a Wikibook on Lepidoptera, butterflies or moths.
  • Coordinate information with Wikispecies and Wiktionary.

Task Set 3 - Improve general standard of the project

  • Get maximum information, images, links and references for each article. Each article to be made up to required standard.
  • Get a recording for spoken Wikipedia for each stable article.
  • Get short videos appropriately for each article, convert to Ogg Theora, place on WM Commons and link up on the articles.
  • Get maps ready for each species and place in each article.

Article and task requests

Templates

Stub templates

for example, placing the stub on a page gives the following effect :-

 This butterfly-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

for example, placing the stub on a page gives the following effect :-

 This moth-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
  • Aside - the butterfly-stub shows a Blue Morpho butterfly, a nymphalid, while the moth-stub depicts an Atlas moth, a saturniid.

We now have family stubs for the four specific Lepidoptera families :-

File:250px-Common blue butterfly underside 800.jpg This Lycaenidae-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
 This Nymphalidae-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
 This Papilionidae-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
 This Pieridae-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
 This Hesperiidae-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
  • The family stubs also create the respective stub categories in the wikipages where they appear.

Talk page template

Please place {{LepidopteraTalk}} at the top of an article's talk page. This will help to direct editors to the WikiProject Lepidoptera mainpage for guidance.

  • e.g.:
    WikiProject iconLepidoptera NA‑class
    WikiProject iconThis page is within the scope of WikiProject Lepidoptera, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of butterflies and moths on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LepidopteraWikipedia:WikiProject LepidopteraTemplate:WikiProject LepidopteraLepidoptera articles
    NAThis page does not require a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.

The template takes an argument of the form {{LepidopteraTalk|quality|importance}}. The arguments to be filled for importance and quality can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Lepidoptera/Article Classification.

Lepidoptera families listbox template

This template creates a box listing the families of Lepidoptera and provides a navigational aid. It also indicates by red links those families which do not have a wiki at all. This template is recommended for taxonomy wikis (above species level), checklists and general articles on Lepidoptera.

Placing this template on a page results in a box as shown below:-

WikiProject Lepidoptera Userbox

{{User WPLepidoptera}}

results in:
WikiProject Lepidoptera
This user is a member of
Wikiproject Lepidoptera

Lists

Important Articles

Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Lepidoptera/Articles.

Adopt an article

Resources

Resources provided by participants of this Project

Project subpages

For a complete list of Project subpages see here.


also relevant

Online

How to cite LepIndex
  • Usage of data from LepIndex in scientific publications should be acknowledged using the following format:
Beccaloni, G. W., Scoble, M. J., Robinson, G. S. & Pitkin, B. (Editors). 2003. The Global Lepidoptera Names Index (LepIndex). World Wide Web electronic publication. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/entomology/lepindex [accessed 6 January 2007].
  • If you wish to cite any unpublished information from LepIndex then please credit the person responsible for it (presuming the name of an individual is given). For example, on the card for bibarra Chu & Wang, 1991 there is a pencil annotation by M. Shaffer written in 1991, which indicates that he transferred this species to the genus CANAEA (thus CANAEA bibarra is an unpublished or MS combination). The citation should therefore be as follows:-
Shaffer, M. In: Beccaloni, G. W., Scoble, M. J., Robinson, G. S. & Pitkin, B. (Editors). 2003. The Global Lepidoptera Names Index (LepIndex). World Wide Web electronic publication. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/entomology/lepindex [accessed 6 January 2007].
  • Note, however, that some of the 'manuscript changes' written on the cards may have subsequently been published. It is therefore advisable to contact the person responsible for the annotation and ask whether or not this is the case.
  • Lepidopteran caterpillar hosts database Another project of the Natural History Museum. It is a database of larval foodplants of butterflies. You can search by butterfly_name, butterfly_family_name, plant_name, plant_family_name and country/region.
  • Another interesting taxonomy project from Finland! The gentleman, Markku Savela, uses perl scripts to generate rough distribution maps from the text data on distribution. The site is at : [3]

Print

  • Charles A. Triplehorn, Norman F. Johnson Borror and DeLong's introduction to the study of insects, 7th edition, Thomson Brooks/Cole, 2005 - Excellent reference for insects. The keys are for North-America but can apply also to European insects.
  • Kristensen, N.P. (Ed.). 1999. Lepidoptera, Moths and Butterflies. Volume 1: Evolution, Systematics, and Biogeography. Handbuch der Zoologie. Eine Naturgeschichte der Stämme des Tierreiches / Handbook of Zoology. A Natural History of the phyla of the Animal Kingdom. Band / Volume IV Arthropoda: Insecta Teilband / Part 35: 491 pp. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York. For taxonomy...
  • Scoble, MJ. 1995. The Lepidoptera: Form Function and Diversity. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-854952-0 Excellent for Lep biology. However, Scoble seems to have changed his mind about some of the taxonomy: here, he has Geometroidea and Uranioidea, but in his chapter in Kristensen, he has Uraniidae and Sematuriidae in Geometroidea.

Sister Project Searches

Web sites helping identification

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lepidoptera.
Wikispecies has information related to Lepidoptera .
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