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For Insects, Spiders & Their Kin
For the United States & Canada
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Calendar
BugGuide Gathering
Smoky Mountains
University of Tennessee Biological Field Station
August 8-10, 2008
 
Photos from the gathering
 
Photos from the 2007 gathering in Minnesota

moth tree cleanup

In an attempt to reduce the complexity of the taxonomic tree (discussed here) I looked through the moth tree and found a number of solitary "non-standard" taxa (i.e. higher taxa other than Order, Family, Genus).

Based on the classification at All-Leps, there were 6 solitary North American subfamilies (Choreutinae, Adelinae, Lymantriinae, Glyphipteriginae, Limacodinae, Procridinae) and 7 tribes (Smerinthini, Sphingini, Blastodacnini, Acontiini, Glottulini, Sarrothripini, Pyralini). I've put comments about these taxa on the appropriate higher-level pages, so all that remains is to move the subordinate taxa up one level and then delete the 6 subfamily and 7 tribe pages. Anyone opposed?

10 taxa removed
Of the above-named pages, I deleted the 9 that I created plus the one by J & J (Glottulini), but kept the 3 pages Patrick created (Adelinae, Smerinthini, Sphingini).

The deleted pages were blank; it would take only seconds to re-create them if necessary...

 
Thanks for all that research
and work! It is great to have someone taking care of the moth images and guide pages.

Sounds good to us -
We would even suggest thinking about going deeper at some time. For example, Cossidae has five genera so far, but it has four subfamilies. Essentially each genus is hidden behind a subfamily name. While we agree with Lynette that it would be nice to have all that taxonomy somewhere, we find it just clutters the taxonomy section for moths. When we're looking for a genus we either use 'search', or 'view all' in taxonomy (which is a huge list!), because otherwise we just can't find anything using the taxonomy. It's difficult enough to learn the genera, but to learn the subfamilies too is just too much.

 
Taxonomic clutter
I share your concerns about sufamilies and tribes hiding the genera, but I hate to have taxonomic work undone. Maybe in the future it will be possible to program BugGuide to display just levels down to genera in a given family. OSF has some capabilities like that--click on the "change items displayed" button, and you can see some of this.

 
I agree
with Patrick.

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