Lepidoptera

Kristensen, Niels P., Scoble, Malcolm J. & Karsholt, Ole, 2007, Lepidoptera phylogeny and systematics: the state of inventorying moth and butterfly diversity, Zootaxa 1668, pp. 699-747 : 730-731

Lepidoptera systematics: information sources

The Lepidoptera counterpart of Junk's monumental ' Coleopterorum Catalogus ' was still quite incomplete when its publication ceased by the time of World War II. By now, of course, the published parts are very outdated. The series was later revived in 1980s (J.Heppner ed.) and has served the publication of Poole's aforementioned noctuid catalogue, which represents a notable step forward in Lepidoptera stocktaking; treatments of several smaller families have since been forthcoming. Other useful modern global-scope reference works are Bridges' butterfly catalogues (1989a–e; Nymphalidae are not covered) and the ' World Catalogue of Insects' series in which so far treatments of Pterophoroidea & Alucitidae ( Gielis 2003) , Tortricidae ( Brown 2005) , Gracillariidae (de Prins & de Prins 2005) and Coleophoridae (s.str.) ( Baldizzone et al.2006) have appeared. As noted above, the large family Geometridae was catalogued by Scoble et al. (1995) and the hawkmoths ( Sphingidae ) were catalogued by Kitching & Cadiou (2000), both outside a serial framework.

Of special note are the six volumes constituting the 'Catalogue of the Generic Names of the Moths of the World' compiled by I.W.B.Nye and his colleagues at the Natural History Museum, London. These Generic Names catalogues were built from the comprehensive collection of index cards to Lepidoptera . The archive is composed of over 290,000 cards to all categories down to species and infraspecific names. It provides names, their associated bibliographical information and taxonomic status. Two digital products have emerged from this remarkable resource - one direct one indirect. LepIndex, the Global Lepidoptera Names Index , (Beccaloni et al., http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/projects/lepindex/index.html) provides users with searchable webaccess to images of all the cards of Lepidoptera (indexing ceased for most taxa in 1981). The Butterflies and Moths of the World website (Pitkin & Jenkins, http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/projects/butmoth/) is a web-based interactive catalogue to the genus-group names of Lepidoptera from Linnaeus (1758) to July 2004. The compilation was derived from several published sources (notably, of course, the Generic Names volumes), with many of these sources themselves being based on the card archive.

Regional/local checklists come in many forms. The only major zoogeographical region for which complete, modern Lepidoptera checklists are available are North America (Hodges et al., 1983) and Australia (Nielsen et al. 1996); a checklist of Neotropical Lepidoptera is in the course of publication since 1984 (Heppner ed.). Important sub-regional checklists include, e.g., those by Karsholt & Razowski (1996) on Europe (and a more recent electronic list is available on http://www.faunaeur.org/), Heppner (1992) on Taiwan and Vári et al. (2002) on Southern Africa.

As for other insect orders a useful survey of identification works, including primary research articles, was given by Hollis (1980). Works of regional scope that proved invaluable tools for Lepidoptera systematists worldwide include the accounts of Nearctic Lepidoptera immatures in 'Immature Insects' (F.Stehr ed, 1987), the book by Common (1990) on Australian moths, and Holloway et al. 2001 on Malesian Lepidoptera . The somewhat detailed account of Lepidoptera systematics on a global basis presented in the multi-author treatment of the order in the ' Handbuch der Zoologie/Handbook of Zoology ' series (Kristensen ed. 1998) also gives many references to identification literature.

Many important internet resources for systematic Lepidopterology can be found at http://www.lepsoc.org/ lepidoptera _websites_both.php. Of particular note are also the principal websites that give access to important classical descriptive literature, thereby greatly facilitating revisionary studies to workers who have no easy access to comprehensive libraries: ‘Biodiversity Heritage Library’ (http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/) and ‘Animal Base’ (http://www.animalbase.uni-goettingen.de/zooweb/servlet/AnimalBase/search#about); both are still in development