Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lepidoptera/Archive1

Talk:WikiProject Lepidoptera posts from May 2006 to June 2007 are archived here.

First log
Just created the WikiProject on Lepidoptera, so here goes... Special thanks to Kylu for catching and correcting my first goofup, that is, I created the page on article namespace, instead of Wikipedia namespace. AshLin 02:14, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Pure gallery pages
I wonder if there is any wikipedia tradition to make a pure gallery page. Just like the list pages but pictorial. This would have images and the captions would like to article pages. This can help in making quick image lookups for butterflies. Shyamal 08:59, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Usually, pure gallery pages are created on the Commons. The huge advantage of doing this is that the images are available to all wikis (ie. all languages) to access and use in their articles. If you want to create a gallery I strongly recommend doing it on the Commons. For example, I have created a page about my university at Concordia University (there are for the moment very few images, I am going to add more when I get the time). I think this type of page could suit your endeavours. You can check out Commons:Category:Lepidoptera to see the pictures already there. Hope that helps. Iron C hris |  (talk) 02:24, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I am aware of the galleries on the commons but I do not think the images have captions linking to the English (or any other) wikipedia articles. What I am thinking is something like the regional species lists, but with pictures. So the there could be two lists one pictorial and the other as a text version list.Shyamal 03:21, 26 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok, well, there's nothing to prevent you from creating this kind of gallery. I don't know of any previous examples, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it! I think it's a great idea. You're right, I checked the Commons and there doesn't seem to be any links to articles (which is logical as it it shared between Wikis). Iron C hris |  (talk) 03:44, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Eacles imperialis
I'd still content that I am quite a newbie at wikipedia, but I was wondering if anyone could give me their impression of basically the one page that I have made almost to completion. Any suggestions would also be more than welcome.

Eacles imperialis --Kugamazog 21:00, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * It looks great ! Shyamal 10:49, 29 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Very nice page! --Viren 05:29, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Article Lepidoptera
Can somebody with access to recent reviews of lepidopteran phylogeny please work on the classification part of the article. I just removed a large amount (i am sure, painfully formatted) content which however, is hard to read and involves a lot of scrolling. A SVG format tree of the families would probably be a better way of putting in the same information. Shyamal 10:49, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Moth Stub
I am proposing a stub, called 'moth stub', as a sister stub to 'butterfly stub' and a subcategory of 'insect stub'. The procedure requires that we justify by showing that a 'good number |over 60 articles' of moth articles are stubs requiring attention and thus require a categorty of their own. So I am in search of all moth articles which are not yet full fledged articles (very easy, majority of Lepidoptera articles are stubs). I intend to mark them with a generic 'insect stub' and list them on a new project page called WikiProject Lepidoptera/Moth Stubs. When we get the list done, I shall propose a 'moth stub'. I have requested User:Kugamazog for some moth images for use in this stub and other places in WikiProject Lepidoptera. AshLin 07:32, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * What up with it. Is it ready. I've put up a couple of images of sphingids that I had reared and one that I found dead in my room. they've been given the standard insect stub. When we going get a moth stub for ourselves?? --Viren 05:05, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * See Stub Proposals for the procedure and our listing of the moth stub. We have two supports so far. We are supposed to wait a week and then go ahead and make the stub on the tenth of June as per the guidelines. Shyamal has given me an Atlas moth image. Request you to take on making the stub.AshLin 06:00, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Moth stub is ready and placed on main page below the butterfly stub entry. This is an occassion, folks! Lets celebrate by placing moth stubs on all moth articles suitable of being called stubs.AshLin 18:38, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Moth article requests
I just did a quick search and found to my surprise that two very economically important moths dont figure on wikipedia Spodoptera litura and Helicoverpa armigera (=Heliothis armigera) Shyamal 03:43, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I have a moth to do list as long as your arm. Loads of economically important moths are missing - I will do my best to get as many on as possible! Richard Barlow 11:03, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

ID
Id needed please... Shyamal 08:42, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
 * It's Hesperiidae but you probably knew that anyway :) Can't help beyond that sorry. Richard Barlow 11:10, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Check Tamil Grass Dart?? --Viren 03:09, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Lepidoptera template change
I have just found out how to make those useful [Show] / [Hide] controls, and have added them to the slightly unwieldy template of lepidopteran families. Please let me know if you have any problems with it. --Stemonitis 13:44, 27 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Great work. Seems OK to me! Especially as this template is generally placed at the bottom of a page. Keep up the innovations! AshLin 17:08, 27 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Quite neat. Great going Stemonitis --Viren 03:13, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Self announcement!
Hello, all. I just signed my name on the list. I guess Ashlin stumbled upon my edits of late at butterfly and dragonfly articles. I'm an admin an longtime contributor to Commons: and recently an admin here. I have recently taken to really enjoy my digital camera, and decided to make articles for images that I had taken! Imagine that there's a Wikiproject! Anyway... I'll do waht I can. Bastique &#09660; parler voir 23:21, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

How to page?
Hey guys, I had a question. Since I rear Saturniids for fun and to upload the images to wiki, I was thinking about creating a page devoted to how to actually do so. I have sold off many of the eggs (so that I have money to buy other species), and many of the people ask me how to raise them. A how to page over this would be very informative and useful, but I am unfamilar with the wiki rules on this. Any suggestions? --Kugamazog 17:12, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Wikibooks has a how-tos repository at this page. Create a wikibook then add it to the How-tos category. --cfp 19:16, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

ID Request
Hi, Could anyone ID the butterflies and caterpillar from User:Cfp\Unidentified Butterflies? The photos were all taken in Slovenia. Any information would be much appreciated. Thanks, --cfp 00:24, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The butterflies appear to be Lycaenids (except for the first one). The last one is probably a moth. My beat is India so sorry for the unhelpful attempt. Could you please add serial numbers in the captions to the gallery so that people can indicate the butterfly they are identifying. AshLin 05:12, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I guess B is Melitaea athalia. I don't think it will be possible to identify the C (Lycaenidae) without a picture of the underside. The most common of this Family is the Common Blue Polyommatus icarus. The caterpillar is Malacosoma neustria. E Zygaena filipendulae or Zygaena transalpina, can't be distinguished definitly without viewing the underside of the front wings. Soft criterias: Z. transalpina has most often white antenna tips and clear separated red dots on the upper side. The first I can't see on your picture, but the second is true, especially for the first pair at the base. Therefore I tend more to Z. transalpina. Hope that helps, --Hsuepfle 10:55, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Impressive, nice work. So that just leaves A and D. Anyone else have any ideas? (I've updated the gallery from the above.) --cfp 19:22, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I've created a stub for the one dead cert image (there wasn't one for it before) at Lackey moth. --cfp 20:56, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
 * A is actually a moth, the day-flying geometrid Rheumaptera hastata (commonly called Argent and Sable). For B, I'm leaning towards Melitaea diamina as it seems a little dark for M. athalia (see ) although the experts have difficulty with these fritillaries and often have to cut them up! I agree with C probably being Polyommatus icarus. D is Hamearis lucina, the Duke of Burgundy. E is Zygaena sp as discussed above, can't add anything to that discussion. Richard Barlow 12:51, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Roight I've removed the dead certs from the gallery and placed the renamed files on commons. There's a new WP stub for the first moth at Argent and Sable moth. I will probably go with your guesses on the others as they seem reasonable and it doesn't look like any more certainty is possible. Still, I'll give it a day or so. It seems likely E is Transalpina because it was taken in the alps, and it looks a heck of a lot like: . Thanks for all your help. --cfp 20:00, 7 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Right all done. Thanks again. Z transalpina and M. diamina both have WP stubs now at their latin names. --cfp 20:37, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Adding to the Project Infrastructure
Taking a leaf out of WikiProject Spiders, I am adding to the infrastructure by creating project pages and reorganising the main pages.

We'll also have a system of assessing the importance and development of an article. See WikiProject Spiders/Article Classification for more details. AshLin 19:40, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

ID
Could you guys have a look at this little beauty: butterfly and help me identify it please. --ro&#124;3ek 11:45, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I'd love to have a look but I can't get your link to work! Richard Barlow 15:30, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that, this should work better: . I wanted to upload the third one but first one looks good too... (forgot I'm such a talented photographer ;) --ro&#124;3ek 17:44, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Third looks like a lime butterfly Papilio demoleus (Asia) or citrus butterfly Papilio demodocus (Africa), probably the latter. Where did you photograph it? AshLin 19:07, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Photgraphs were taken at a Butterfly Farm in England... problem is that according to their list http://www.butterflyfarm.co.uk/pupaeshop/print_current.php they've got both lime and citrus one ;) --ro&#124;3ek 19:32, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

ID again
Image:Lyc_gkvk.jpg Lycaenid from Bangalore, India. Sorry, haven't found the time to do my homework and identify it myself :( Shyamal 05:25, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I have decide it as Euchrysops cnejus. Shyamal 01:25, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Featured picture, 27 September 2006
Macroglossum stellatarum, thanks to IronChris for the beautiful picture! ~Kylu ( u | t )  04:00, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Unidentified Lepidoptera page is up
Please place the images of your unidentified moths and butterflies WikiProject Lepidoptera/Unidentified pictures henceforth. Regards, Ashwin

Stub - a more developed version
Hi, trying to make my stubs more refined - please see Acytolepis and Acytolepis puspa. Comments welcome. AshLin 15:47, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Species
Hi there. I am new to the project but have worked on a couple pretty in depth articles on specific species of butterfly. I note a distinct lack of species cataloged, perhaps we should work on that as a priority, what's a butterfly project without butterflies? My new List of subspecies to Euphydryas editha shows a big hole in the knowledge base, I already started a couple articles there, but there are a ton others to do. 23:25, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Project directory
Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 23:47, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Wildlife Barnstar
There is currently a barnstar proposal at Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals/New Proposals for a barnstar which would be available for use for this project. Please feel free to visit the page and make any comments you see fit. Badbilltucker 15:29, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Veterinary medicine project
There is now a proposed project at WikiProject Council/Proposals to deal with matters of veterinary medicine, a subject which currently has disproportionately low content in wikipedia. Any wikipedia editors who have an interest in working on content related to the subject are encouraged to indicate as much there. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 22:08, 6 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Is there even such a thing as lepidoptera veterinary medicine? ~Kylu ( u | t )  03:55, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

identification
Does somebody knows the species of the following butterfly (Both pictures are from the same butterfly). I personally like the second photo very much. I took the photos in the Butterfly Farm in La Guacima near Alajuela in Costa Rica. --Donar Reiskoffer 21:22, 15 December 2006 (UTC)


 * On second thought the two may not be the same butterfly. Identification still welcome but perhaps more difficult now. --Donar Reiskoffer 17:41, 17 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The left one is | Mexican Sister or | Band-celled Sister Adelpha fessonia (Hewitson), a Nymphalid, and a lovely one at that. but I think you have identified it already as per Wikimedia page. The closeup seems to be of the same butterfly except for trhe green patch which seems to indicate a colour not associated with the underside of that species. So cant say.AshLin 21:40, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:22, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

"Lepidopteran that feed on" lists
Just a couple comments on these... first, these lists would be more useful if they discussed the range in which they would be found in nature (either native or introduced).

Second, I've been importing a couple of them to wikibooks for a garden book, but it seems most of the species are European. The wikibooks chapters have longer lists including species in the North American range. Should I leave a list of those here? See, e.g. A Wikimanual of Gardening/Acer compared with List of Lepidoptera which feed on Maples. The caterpillar list (scroll down) was 1/2 made from the wp list, and 1/2 from my old website (now gone in favor of wikibooks). Should I just leave a note on the list's talk page, or leave a list of them here? The links will need to be altered (they use subpage convention), but I assume there's probably articles for most of those. -- SB_Johnny |talk|books 19:00, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi. You've got me to blame for these lists! I started creating them after the lists of Lepidoptera I was adding to plant pages started getting out of hand. If you have a penchant for Herculean tasks, check out the fantastic HOSTS, my main ref for these pages (there is a link at the bottom of each of the pages).


 * To give you some idea of the amount of data here, typing "Quercus" in the hostplant genus returns 6213 results and typing "Gramineae" in hostplant family returns 8005! (though there is some duplication). Making these lists comprehensive is obviously going to take quite a lot of work. I do wish I had more time sometimes:) Richard Barlow 13:16, 11 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh I'm certainly not complaining about the lists :-). I was just thinking that breaking them up by geographic regions (which will involve repetition for cosmopolitan and invasive species) would be nice for the reader. For example, if I was going on a walk with my daughter in another part of the world and we saw an interesting caterpillar, it would be nice to have a list where I could look it up and show her what kind of butterfly/moth it would become (assuming I could figure out what the host plant was, of course). Thumbnails of the caterpillars might be nice too. -- SB_Johnny |talk|books 20:48, 11 January 2007 (UTC)


 * (Puffs out cheeks) I'd better start work then:) I'm wary of creating huge lists which are mainly red as this seems a little pointless so I intend to create at least a genus stub that items in the lists can be pointed to and before doing this I'm trying to get a page created for all lep families which includes a genus list or a link to a genus list for the bigger families (so that the genus stubs are not orphans). The genus lists are of course mainly red at the moment but I think this is more justifiable. This is progressing reasonably using yet another NHM database here but I haven't done Noctuidae or Geometridae yet (sobs and reaches for bottle).


 * As well as a geographical split, I think the lists should probably be ordered systematically with sci name first rather than alphabetically by common name (lots of butterflies and moths of course don't have a common name). Of course I should have done this to begin with:< Richard Barlow 10:08, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Microformat
Please be aware of the proposed Species microformat, particularly in relation to taxoboxes. Comments welcome on the wiki at that link. Andy Mabbett 15:41, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

ISBN problems
There is a small community working on invalid ISBN numbers found on wikipedia. The following articles about butterflies have been identified as containing invalid information. After a conscientious search valid numbers were not found. Rather than propagate false data on the net these ISBNs will be deleted. This is likely to occur in the very near future.


 * 1) Parnassius acdestis - Parnassiinae of the World - Part 2
 * 2) Parnassius charltonius - Parnassiinae of the World - Part 1
 * 3) Parnassius hannyngtoni - Parnassiinae of the World - Part 2
 * 4) Parnassius hunza - Parnassiinae of the World - Part 2
 * 5) Parnassius imperator - Parnassiinae of the World - Part 1
 * 6) Parnassius maharaja - Parnassiinae of the World - Part 1
 * 7) Parnassius simo - Parnassiinae of the World - Part 1

I hope someone finds this information useful. --DRoll 05:11, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
 * On Parnassius maharaja User:Ekotkie has identified the book in question to have OCLC: 26830211 . Shyamal 09:02, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
 * While Jean-Claude Weiss's book, as published in 1991, has an invalid ISBN, there is a later edition published in 1999 in Canterbury, UK, with the valid ISBN 0-9532240-2-3. I went ahead and updated the Parnassius maharaja article with the newer version. I'll wait before changing the others in case anyone in this project prefers to keep the old edition listed.  If no-one objects, I'll update the other six articles as well. EdJohnston 21:10, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Preference for scientific over common?
Hey guys, I have created a lot of pages under the scientific name and moved a few from common to scientific. I have a few arguments for putting things in scientific (such as colloquial names like Emperor moth and moon moth can change depending on location, but scientific does not), but I was wondering if we already had a policy in place. If we do not, I'd like to put my two cents into having preference for the scientific.--Kugamazog 02:14, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * WP:TOL seems to be guiding well. Most of the lepidoptera I have added have been on scientific names. Shyamal 08:54, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Agreed No question about it. Scientific over common. Additionally I used to create redirect pages for the common names. --Viren 04:10, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
 * WP:TOL actually prefers common names over scientific names, as does WP:NC(CN) and WP:ARTH. I see no reason to treat Lepidoptera differently, particularly since so many of them (in comparison to other insect orders) have widely-used and stable common names. --Stemonitis 06:49, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * No strong preference here, but I personally find it too problematic to choose from many possible common name variants, hyphenation and capitalization rules. Unlike for the birds, there has not been a global effort at reducing common name clashes. There are already some examples like White Admiral. The common names are also so fanciful that it would clash a lot with other articles - Quaker, Admiral, Nigger, Mormon etc. So, it is probably ok in some cases, but not very stable. Shyamal 07:39, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Pantoporia hordonia
I stumbled on the Pantoporia hordonia article through the Random Link and would like to suggest that the information be reworked a bit. Use of complete sentences would be especially nice. I am not certain of the significance of "Wet-season form. Both male and female. Upperside black with orange markings." and text like this which begins the article. It is probably meaningless to someone not versed in moth nomenclature (such as myself) and limits the audience to which this information is useful. --Tralfaz (Ralraz, yech) 15:55, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Mea culpa. These are archaic descriptions and yes they do need improvement and I have tried to do some now. And I noticed we had no information on wet and dry season forms. Added an entry to butterfly on seasonal polyphenism. Shyamal 07:41, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Looking for stubs
Would people from this project be interested in creating two stubs/articles to remove redlinks for a FAC? The needed articles are Stalk Borer (Papaipema nebris, a pest of Maize) and Mullein Moth (Cucullia verbasci). Thanks in advance. Circeus 04:31, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Done. AshLin 20:07, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Some stubs
I don't know the first thing about Lepidoptera, but that didn't stop me creating Arotrophora, Arotrophora arcuatalis and Xylorycta today, in anticipation of linking to them in a forthcoming article. I commend them to your care; if you can see obvious ways to improve them, please do so. Hesperian 05:49, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * You may consider adding images if they are available at your end in Australia. AshLin 14:45, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

A nice taxonomic resource
Hi, I find myself coming to Markku Savela's page ever so often to check out the odd taxonomic/systematic detail. The Lepidoptera tree starts at. Be aware of the disclaimer - it's not authoritative, and he doesn't want it to be cited as a taxonomic reference. But it's one of the best overall Lepidoptera resources out there if you want to cross-check species lists etc. Dysmorodrepanis 16:23, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Template problem
I noticed your project template doesn't accept the class= argument. Why does it do this? It's confusing if every project uses 'class=start' and yours uses only 'start'. Richard001 08:44, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
 * This was copied from some other project. Feel free to bring it to the norm. Afraid I have not been successful with this template in the past. Shyamal 11:19, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see. I did the same with the ecology template, which had a couple of errors as well. Do you remember which project you copied it from by any chance? It's better if we track these things down since it's frustrating to have different codes for every project. Richard001 10:54, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I looked up the template history, it was Template:ArthropodTalk. Shyamal 11:35, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Drepanidae diversity problem
I outcommented some stuff at Drepanoidea and Drepanidae (see source) as regards the number of species and genera. The figure in the family was MUCH higher than that given in the superfamily... The source for the family claim is apparently List of drepanid genera based on the NHM list linked there. But as I double-checked it against the funet list, I found it contains heaps of synonyms and even more taxa that cannot be traced. While the funet list is probably not at all complete, the NHM claim of validity for certainly invalid taxa makes the source highly suspect. I have annotated the genera that need checking. E.g. Watsonalla seems to be a synonym of Falcaria, but I am not a lepidopterologist and having stumbled upon the problem just now have no sources at hand with which to work. Dysmorodrepanis 14:34, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Thaumetopoeidae
Not all consider it valid, but at any rate it's missing from the "Families of Lepidoptera" box. Dysmorodrepanis 01:45, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

WP:TOL template
I'm working on a proposal to subsume all the WP:TOL project banners into a single one. Please see WikiProject Tree of Life/Template union proposal and its talk page. Circeus 19:22, 6 June 2007 (UTC)