Lepidoptera or lepidopterans is an order of winged insects that includes butterflies and moths. About 180,000 species of the Lepidoptera have been described, representing 10% of the total described species of living organisms, making it the second largest insect order with 126 families and 46 superfamilies. and one of the most widespread and widely recognizable insect orders in the world.
Moths are a group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies. They were previously classified as suborder Heterocera, but the group is paraphyletic with respect to butterflies and neither subordinate taxa are used in modern classifications. Moths make up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of which have yet to be described. Most species of moth are nocturnal, although there are also crepuscular and diurnal species.
The hummingbird hawk-moth is a species of hawk moth found across temperate regions of Eurasia. The species is named for its similarity to hummingbirds, as they feed on the nectar of tube-shaped flowers using their long proboscis while hovering in the air; this resemblance is an example of convergent evolution.
The Noctuidae, commonly known as owlet moths, cutworms or armyworms, are a family of moths. They are considered the most controversial family in the superfamily Noctuoidea because many of the clades are constantly changing, along with the other families of the Noctuoidea. It was considered the largest family in Lepidoptera for a long time, but after regrouping Lymantriinae, Catocalinae and Calpinae within the family Erebidae, the latter holds this title now. Currently, Noctuidae is the second largest family in Noctuoidea, with about 1,089 genera and 11,772 species. This classification is still contingent, as more changes continue to appear between Noctuidae and Erebidae.
The luna moth, also called the American moon moth, is a Nearctic moth in the family Saturniidae, subfamily Saturniinae, a group commonly named the giant silk moths.
Skippers are a group of butterflies placed in the family Hesperiidae within the order Lepidoptera. They were previously placed in a separate superfamily, Hesperioidea; however, the most recent taxonomy places the family in the superfamily Papilionoidea, the butterflies. They are named for their quick, darting flight habits. Most have their antenna tips modified into narrow, hook-like projections. Moreover, skippers mostly have an absence of wing-coupling structure available in most moths. More than 3500 species of skippers are recognized, and they occur worldwide, but with the greatest diversity in the Neotropical regions of Central and South America.
The Arctiinae are a large and diverse subfamily of moths with around 11,000 species found all over the world, including 6,000 neotropical species. This subfamily includes the groups commonly known as tiger moths, which usually have bright colours, footmen, which are usually much drabber, lichen moths, and wasp moths. Many species have "hairy" caterpillars that are popularly known as woolly bears or woolly worms. The scientific name Arctiinae refers to this hairiness. Some species within the Arctiinae have the word "tussock"' in their common names because they have been misidentified as members of the Lymantriinae subfamily based on the characteristics of the larvae.
The Gelechiidae are a family of moths commonly referred to as twirler moths or gelechiid moths. They are the namesake family of the huge and little-studied superfamily Gelechioidea, and the family's taxonomy has been subject to considerable dispute. These are generally very small moths with narrow, fringed wings. The larvae of most species feed internally on various parts of their host plants, sometimes causing galls. Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga) is a host plant common to many species of the family, particularly of the genus Chionodes, which as a result is more diverse in North America than usual for Gelechioidea.
The Pyralidae, commonly called pyralid moths, snout moths or grass moths, are a family of Lepidoptera in the ditrysian superfamily Pyraloidea. In many classifications, the grass moths (Crambidae) are included in the Pyralidae as a subfamily, making the combined group one of the largest families in the Lepidoptera. The latest review by Eugene G. Munroe and Maria Alma Solis retain the Crambidae as a full family of Pyraloidea.
Prunus virginiana, commonly called bitter-berry, chokecherry, Virginia bird cherry, and western chokecherry, is a species of bird cherry native to North America.
The Moth is a small development class of sailing dinghy. Originally a small, fast home-built sailing boat designed to plane, since 2000 it has become an expensive and largely commercially produced boat designed to hydroplane on foils though many are still built at home, typically at much lower cost.
Sloths are a Neotropical group of xenarthran mammals constituting the suborder Folivora, including the extant arboreal tree sloths and extinct terrestrial ground sloths. Noted for their slowness of movement, tree sloths spend most of their lives hanging upside down in the trees of the tropical rainforests of South America and Central America. Sloths are considered to be most closely related to anteaters, together making up the xenarthran order Pilosa.
The Calpinae are a subfamily of moths in the family Erebidae described by Jean Baptiste Boisduval in 1840. This subfamily includes many species of moths that have a pointed and barbed proboscis adapted to piercing the skins of fruit to feed on juice, and in the case of the several Calyptra species of vampire moths, to piercing the skins of mammals to feed on blood. The subfamily contains some large moths with wingspans longer than 5 cm (2 in).
The Erebidae are a family of moths in the superfamily Noctuoidea. The family is among the largest families of moths by species count and contains a wide variety of well-known macromoth groups. The family includes the underwings (Catocala); litter moths (Herminiinae); tiger, lichen, and wasp moths (Arctiinae); tussock moths (Lymantriinae), including the arctic woolly bear moth ; piercing moths ; micronoctuoid moths (Micronoctuini); snout moths (Hypeninae); and zales, though many of these common names can also refer to moths outside the Erebidae. Some of the erebid moths are called owlets.
The Erebinae are a subfamily of moths in the family Erebidae erected by William Elford Leach in 1815. Erebine moths are found on all continents except Antarctica, but reach their greatest diversity in the tropics. While the exact number of species belonging to the Erebinae is not known, the subfamily is estimated to include around 10,000 species. Some well-known Erebinae include underwing moths (Catocala) and witch moths (Thermesiini). Many of the species in the subfamily have medium to large wingspans, up to nearly 30 cm in the white witch moth, which has the widest wingspan of all Lepidoptera. Erebine caterpillars feed on a broad range of plants; many species feed on grasses and legumes, and a few are pests of castor bean, sugarcane, rice, as well as pistachios and blackberries.
BugGuide is a website and online community of naturalists, both amateur and professional, who share observations of arthropods such as insects, spiders, and other related creatures. The website consists of informational guide pages and many thousands of photographs of arthropods from the United States and Canada which are used for identification and research. The non-commercial site is hosted by the Iowa State University Department of Entomology. BugGuide was conceived by photographer Troy Bartlett in 2003 and since 2006 has been maintained by John VanDyk, an adjunct assistant professor of entomology and a senior systems analyst at Iowa State University. The website has been recognized for helping change the public perception of insects.
David Adamski is an American entomologist working as a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History and a support scientist in the Systematic Entomology Laboratory (SEL), United States Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. He obtained a PhD degree from the Mississippi State University, Department of Entomology in 1987 after defending a dissertation, titled "The Morphology and evolution of North American Blastobasidae (Lepidoptera:Gelechioidea)". His research interests focus on alpha taxonomy, life histories and morphology of moths. Over the years, Adamski produced more than 80 scholarly publications, some in collaboration, shedding light on discernible groups of Lepidoptera including Gelechioidea, Tortricoidea, Pyralidoidea, and Noctuoidea. He studied divergent taxa within the Auchenorrhyncha and Sternorrhyncha, and Phytophagous Acari, as well as Gelechioidea and Blastobasidae. Adamski is a member of the Entomological Society of Washington.
Ronald William Hodges, known as Ron, was an American entomologist and lepidopterist.
A MONA number, or Hodges number after Ronald W. Hodges, is part of a numbering system for North American moths found north of Mexico in the Continental United States and Canada, as well as the island of Greenland. Introduced in 1983 by Hodges through the publication of Check List of the Lepidoptera of America North of Mexico, the system began an ongoing numeration process in order to compile a list of the over 12,000 moths of North America north of Mexico. The system numbers moths within the same family close together for identification purposes. For example, the species Epimartyria auricrinella begins the numbering system at 0001 while Epimartyria pardella is numbered 0002.
