Global Butterfly Names

Copyright and privacy notice

© 2006-2012 Global Butterfly Names Project
All rights reserved. No part of these publications may be reproduced, stored, transmitted or disseminated, in any form, or by any means, without specific prior written permission from the authors, to whom all requests to reproduce copyright material should be directed in writing (email addresses can be provided by James Mallet).
Currently, we present flat files in MS-Excel format and preliminary data. Eventually, the files contained herein will be available as a freely-available butterfly names online database, adopting a simple web interface.  But first, extensive checks need to be made, the web interface needs to be developed or outsourced. Material contained on this website is for non-commercial research use only. This authorization does not extend to any other kind of copying, by any means, in any form, and for any purpose other than private research use.

Aims and progress

History and progress of Global Butterfly Names project
The Lepidoptera Taxome Project

Complete butterfly synonymic checklists so far databased

Very approximately, international Global Butterfly Names workers (including many other groups) have so far databased complete synonymic checklists for ~13,700 species of the supposed total of 17,950 world butterfly species -- around 75% done!  These are provided here in the most recent form I've found.

Braby MF. 2010. The merging of taxonomy and conservation biology: a synthesis of Australian butterfly systematics (Lepidoptera: Hesperioidea and Papilionoidea) for the 21st century. Zootaxa 2707: 1-76. PDF checklist.

Braby MF. 2011. Revised checklist of Australian butterflies (Lepidoptera: Hesperioidea and Papilionoidea): Addendum and Errata. Zootaxa 3128: 67-68. PDF checklist addendum to Braby 2010.

Gerardo Lamas: Neotropical Checklist (list parsed from word-processed format of Lamas et al. 2004 by Fernley Symons) -- 30,305 names.
See also our digitized collection of photos of type specimens of neotropical species, made available online in December 2012 by Butterflies of America, as part of the Tropical Andean Butterfly Diversity Project, funded by the Darwin Initiative of the United Kingdom
See also the formatted Keith Willmott et al. implementation of this Neotropical synonymic checklist.

Gerardo Lamas: Australian Checklist (manually compiled from Braby) -- 2,144 names. See also Braby's updated Zootaxa checklists from 2010-2011 (see above).

Gerardo Lamas: Riodinidae of the World (revised 4 Feb 2008) -- 3659 names, 1470 spp., 146 genera.

Gerardo Lamas: Libytheinae of the World Checklist (manually compiled) -- 129 names.

Gerardo Lamas: Pieridae of the World (uses Bridges Catalogue parsed by Brian Pitkin as starter, revised 4 Feb 2008) -- 8,650 names, 1135 spp., 89 genera.

Gerardo Lamas: Genera and Genus-group Names of the Butterflies of the World (revised 4 Feb 2008) -- 4,739 names.

Gerardo Lamas: Bibliography of Butterflies. An Annotated Bibliography of the Neotropical Butterflies and Skippers (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea and Hesperioidea). Revised Electronic Edition, 2014. (large file, 6.4 MB).

Frank Hsu and Shen-Horn Yen: Oriental Region Checklist (in preparation).

Vladimir Lukhtanov: Palaearctic Butterfly Checklist (in preparation): Papilionidae - Pieridae - Nymphalidae: Satyrinae.

W. John Tennent: A checklist of the butterflies of Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia and some adjacent areas. Zootaxa 1178: 1-209 (21 Apr. 2006) 2 plates; 887 references. Reprint available from: http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/list/2006/2006-04.html . Will be available in electronic format to Global Butterfly Names Project soon -- 2,200 names.

Jonathan Pelham: Nearctic Checklist (in preparation, database to be added here soon). Provisional word-processed checklist.

Mark C. Williams: 2006 Afrotropical Checklist (list originally parsed by Fernley Symons from the 2003 version of "Afrotropical Butterflies and Skippers". See also Symons' Notes) -- 11,960 names.

Other related projects

George Beccaloni et alia: LepIndex. The Global Lepidoptera Names Index. The NHM Lepidoptera Card Index (up till approx. 1980) -- 137,441 names.

Butterflies of America. Showing "160,500 images, and over 14,000 entities." Includes information from the Global Butterfly Names Neotropical checklist (based on Lamas 2004), and photographs of type specimens of Neotropical butterflies made by Dr. Lamas digitized by our Tropical Andean Butterfly Diversity Project.

Other butterfly bibliographies from Butterflies of America, Dallas, Texas.

Brian Pitkin et alia: ButMoth. Generic Names of the Lepidoptera of the World and their Type Species -- 31,147 genus-group names. Not very up-to-date.

Keith Willmott, Blanca Huertas, et alia: Tropical Andean Butterfly Diversity Project.  This project will provide a specimen database of butterflies from the tropical Andean countries; and can provide a complete formatted taxonomic list of neotropical butterflies, an electronic version of Lamas et al. (2004).

 

Reference

Lamas, G., C. Callaghan, M. M. Casagrande, O. Mielke, T. Pyrcz, R. Robbins and A. Viloria. 2004. Hesperioidea - Papilionoidea. Association for Tropical Lepidoptera/Scientific Publishers, Gainesville, Florida.

Jim Mallet
Updated: 24 Jan 2014

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