Wikipedia:WikiProject Lepidoptera

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Macroglossum stellatarum, a featured picture by IronChris on 27 September 2006

The aim of this WikiProject is to set out broad suggestions about how to organize data in the articles relating to the insect order Lepidoptera, which comprises the 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 Insects
WikiProject Lepidoptera

Participants

To become a member, just add yourself in the right place to this alphabetical list.

Inactive

WikiProject guidelines

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 Moduza procris (commander) and Eacles imperialis (imperial moth) as examples of typical species accounts.

Some species have extremely little information and are little more than stubs, so most of these headings are deleted. See Parnassius imperator augustus (imperial Apollo) 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 Danaus chrysippus (plain tiger) and Papilio polytes (common Mormon) as such examples.

Article assessment and quality

Monitoring

New articles

This list was generated from these rules. Questions and feedback are always welcome! The search is being run daily with the most recent ~14 days of results. Note: Some articles may not be relevant to this project.

Rules | Match log | Results page (for watching) | Deleted articles | Last updated: 2026-10-24 19:44 (UTC)

Note: The list display can now be customized by each user. See List display personalization for details.

Article alerts

Articles for deletion

Articles needing cleanup

Wikipedia:WikiProject Lepidoptera/Popular pages

Progress

/Checklist

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:

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

Task Set 2 - Improve general standard of the project

Article and task requests

PopularOutcast, you just change the banner at the top of the articles's talk page from Stub to Start.  Done Tony Holkham (Talk) 08:46, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

References

  1. ↑ Holloway, 2011. Moths of Borneo 2 http://www.mothsofborneo.com/part-2/family-noctuidae.php
  2. ↑ Kononenko & Pinratana, 2013 Moths of Thailand 3(2) Noctuoidea. An illustrated Catalogue of Erebidae, Nolidae, Euteliidae and Noctuidae (Insecta, Lepidoptera) in Thailand
  3. ↑ Zahiri et al. 2013. http://doi:10[permanent dead link].1111/zsc.12022
  4. ↑ Lafontaine & Schmidt, 2013 http://doi:10[permanent dead link].3897/zookeys.264.4441
  5. ↑ Zahiri, R.; Kitching, I. J.; Lafontaine, J. D.; Mutanen, M.; Kaila, L.; Holloway, J. D. & Wahlberg, N., 2010. A new molecular phylogeny offers hope for a stable family level classification of the Noctuoidea (Lepidoptera). Zoologica Scripta 40: 158-173
  6. ↑ Zahiri, R.; Holloway, J. D.; Kitching, I. J.; Lafontaine, D.; Mutanen, M. & Wahlberg, N., 2012. Molecular phylogenetics of Erebidae (Lepidoptera, Noctuoidea). Systematic Entomology 37: 102-124
  7. ↑ Zahiri, R.; Lafontaine, J. D.; Holloway, J. D.; Kitching, I. J.; Schmidt, B. C.; Kaila, L. & Wahlberg, N., 2013. Major lineages of Nolidae (Lepidoptera, Noctuoidea) elucidated by molecular phylogenetics. Cladistics 29: 337-359. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cla.12001.

WikiProject cleanup listing

Templates

Stub templates

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

It also places the associated stub category Category:Moth stubs on the page.

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

It also places the associated stub category Category:Moth stubs on the page.

Aside - the butterfly-stub shows a blue morpho butterfly, a nymphalid, while the moth-stub depicts an Atlas moth, a saturniid moth.

We now have stubs for many Lepidoptera superfamilies/families. See here for the full list.

Talk page template

Please place {{WikiProject Lepidoptera|class=article_quality|importance=article_importance|needs-photo=}} at the top of each article's talk page. This will help to direct editors to WikiProject Lepidoptera for guidance. The arguments to be filled for importance and quality can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Lepidoptera/Article Classification. The value "article_quality" is a measure of the quality of the concerned article and will be one of the following: FA, GA, A, B, B, C, Start, Stub, List or Category. Similarly, "article_importance" is one of: top, high, mid or low. The "needs-photo" item if given a value of "yes" will indicate that a photograph is needed. An example of a WikiProject template with values of "B" for quality and "high" for importance and "yes" for needing a photograph will look like this:

{{WikiProject Lepidoptera|class=B|importance=high|needs-photo=yes}}

and will produce this:

WikiProject iconLepidoptera High‑importance icon
WikiProject iconThis article 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
HighThis article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.
Note icon
An editor has requested that an image or photograph be added to this article.

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:

There's also the superfamily template, incorporating some of the historical and hobbyist terminology (not for taxonomic use).

WikiProject Lepidoptera userbox

{{User WPLepidoptera}}

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

WikiProject Lepidoptera barnstar

{{subst:Lep-star|message ~~~~}}

results in:
The Wikiproject Lepidoptera Barnstar
For editors who have contributed greatly to Wikiproject Lepidoptera
The Lepidoptera Barnstar
{{{1}}}

Important 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

General

  • Tree of Life website
  • LepIndex 'LepIndex' Project of National Museum of Natural History, London. Queries on the site can be placed at: Archived 2008-04-09 at the Wayback Machine. WARNING: Just did a check but Lepindex can not be trusted wrt "original combination". LepIndex was last updated in 2012, and many parts of it are outdated or otherwise incorrect. It is no longer recommended that LepIndex be used as the authoritative reference to check Lepidoptera taxonomy. A revised, curated dataset based on the LepIndex digitized card archive, which is in the process of being corrected and updated, exists as Global Lepidoptera Index (and has been linked further down this list)
  • Beccaloni, G.; Scoble, M.; Kitching, I.; Simonsen, T.; Robinson, G.; Pitkin, B.; Hine, A.; Lyal, C.; Ollerenshaw, J.; Wing, P. (2024-06-19). Hobern, D. (ed.). "Global Lepidoptera Index v1.1.24.171". Retrieved 23 June 2024. The Global Lepidoptera is an updated version of the Lepidoptera Names Index (Lepindex), curated in TaxonWorks. Many groups still have inaccuracies and errors carried over from Lepindex,but some familiees and superfamilies have seen significant updates (see list in status box below). Other groups have not being updated because there are alternative taxonomic resources covering those families and superfamilies (see box below).

By taxonomy

By area

Africa
  • Linking to Afromoths: On the Afromoths website, maintained by Jurate and Willy De Prins at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, pages for species have somewhat dynamic links. Linking to the URL in the browser's address window will not reliably continue to go to that species. Each species page has a "Permalink" button - right clicking on that button and selecting "Copy Link Location", "Copy link address" or similar depending on your browser, will put the permanent link for that species into your clipboard, from which it can be pasted into the link you are creating.
Europe
North America
Oceania

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