Global Butterfly Names - Taxome Project - Progress report

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August 2011

Gerardo Lamas has nearly completed the entire list of butterflies of the world. He now estimates "there are 1,814 valid genera, and 18,732 valid species of butterflies, represented by 85,238 published names."


February 2008

All available butterfly checklist data made available online.  Approx. 75% of global butterfly names now databased. This data includes all known synonyms and invalid names.

Gerardo Lamas begins to work on global family-based treatments.  Pieridae, Riodinidae, Libytheinae done so far.


April 2005 - June 2006

GBIF project funding ends.

Neotropical list complete.

Afrotropical list complete.

Inroads on a number of other checklists, such as Nearctic list, Global Pieridae and Riodinidae complete.

Applications for grants on Palearctic checklists with INTAS involving Vladimir Lukhtanov and others. 

Darwin Initiative grant funded for Tropical Andean Butterfly Diversity Project, which aims to document biodiversity and distributions in the Tropical Andean region.  Depends heavily on the Gerardo Lamas et al. Neotropical butterfly checklist database.

Expect further updates and online data soon.


February 2005 - March 2005

Parsing the 30,000 names in Gerardo Lamas' Neotropical species list by Fernley Symons is now complete. However, due to copyright difficulties, the complete data cannot go online before November 2005.

Vladimir Lukhtanov, who aims to produce a checklist of the Palaearctic taxa, has obtained a Royal Society award for his work "Online Synonymic Checklist of Palaearctic Butterflies". Dr. Lukhtanov will be visiting the NHM in London soon on this grant.

The Australian butterfly names are being compiled manually from existing Australian data by Dr. Lamas. The work is estimated to be complete by the end of March.

A complete world list of Riodinidae, excepting neotropical taxa, has been compiled by Dr. Lamas, and has been parsed into database format by Dr. Symons. Added to the neotropical taxa already parsed, this makes the the Riodinidae the first complete family of butterflies providing a global set of names and classification in the Global Butterfly Names project.


October 2004 - February 2005

Parsing the 30,000 names in Gerardo Lamas' Neotropical species list is going ahead, work mainly being performed by Fernley Symons (DEFRA), in consultation with George Beccaloni (NHM London) and Jim Mallet (UCL/NHM).

Shen-Horn Yen (Academia Sinica, Taiwan) offers Global Butterfly Names project information obtained in the TaiBIF project.  This contact has the potential to help greatly with names from the oriental region.

Brian Pitkin (NHM London), London working on parsing and incorporating Bridges butterfly names database.  Brian Pitkin is also working on migrating all NHM Entomology databases to KE EMu museum databasing system.

Tommaso Racheli (Rome) forwards his checklist of Parides species and information about type specimens.

Gerardo Lamas (Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima), the main taxonomist employed by the grant, arrives in London on 2 February 2005.


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