Wikipedia:WikiProject Lepidoptera

Wikimedia subject-area collaboration From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

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

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

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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

More information Lepidoptera articles by quality and importance, Quality ...
Lepidoptera articles by quality and importance
Quality Importance
Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total
FA 2 2
FM 130 130
GA 3 8 5 13 29
B 1 35 16 72 124
C 1 31 36 564 2 634
Start 71 108 1,858 4 2,041
Stub 2 566 95,670 4 96,242
List 2 90 23 596 2 3 716
Category 3,154 3,154
Disambig 118 118
File 12 12
Project 30 30
Redirect 13 42 3,546 2,688 6,289
Template 10,337 10,337
NA 1 1
Other 1 2 3
Assessed 7 250 796 102,322 16,474 13 119,862
Unassessed 3 3
Total 7 250 796 102,322 16,474 16 119,865
WikiWork factors (?) ω = 590,623 Ω = 5.96
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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: 2026-03-18 19:54 (UTC)

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

Article alerts

Articles for creation

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:

  • Adult (imago), egg, larva (or caterpillar) and chrysalis (pupa or cocoon).
  • Male and female forms, polymorphic forms, mimic forms, dorsal and ventral views.
  • Butterflies and moths involved in activities 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:
    • http://www.ucl.ac.uk/taxome/gbn/ may eventually be the primary database to lookup
    • WikiSpecies pages on Lepidoptera are growing, so check Lepidoptera overall or Butterflies to see what has been posted on this sister Wiki project.
    • LEPINDEX ( Archived 2008-04-09 at the Wayback Machine). (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.)
    • Markku 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).
    • WikiSpecies pages on Lepidoptera are growing, so check there to see what has been posted on this sister Wiki project.
    • van Nieukirken et al., 2011. Order Lepidoptera Linnaeus, 1758. In:Zhang, Z.-Q. (ed.) Animal Biodiversity: an outline of higher-level classification and survey of taxonomic richness. Zootaxa 3148: 212-221. [open access paper published in December 2011]
  • Place the stubs.
  • Prepare articles to extent possible up to the required standard.
  • Place images suitably captioned.

Task Set 2 - 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

Important lists

Important articles

Adopt an article

Resources

Sister project searches

Web sites helping identification

Sister project links

Related Articles

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