Can someone explain the reasoning behind the new name on the "Moths" page?

Nothing should be messed up, except

they will be Lepidoptera stats and searches instead of Moths. Let us know if something has to be fixed.

… john and jane balaban, 23 March, 2016 - 2:21pm

I know of quite a few people

I know of quite a few people that use a moth search to try and identify what they're finding. They search moth (82), state, and month and then go through the results. Using Leps (57) will still work but it will substantially increase the search results and gives them a lot more to search through. I don't use this method so it doesn't affect me.

As a moth geek, I just liked moths having the top spot in the image count on BG. Now we have to share the #1 spot with stupid butterflies. ;)

… Ken Childs, 23 March, 2016 - 3:16pm

Ah ha!

This explains why the system stats and moth searches are messed up.

… Ken Childs, 23 March, 2016 - 12:15pm

Sounds like consensus to us!

How does the new Lepidoptera taxonomy page look to folks? Please suggest changes/improvements.

… john and jane balaban, 18 March, 2016 - 2:44pm

The butterfly image in the clickable guide

still directs to Papilionoidea whereas the Moth image redirects to Lepidoptera. Was this the plan? I think they should both direct to Lepidoptera.

… Kyhl Austin, 18 March, 2016 - 2:04pm

It is fine for the butterfly image to go directly to butterflies

and skippers. Presumably if you click on the butterfly you are interested in going to butterflies. It was the moth image that had to be redirected since there would no longer be any nodes under the moth page.

… john and jane balaban, 18 March, 2016 - 2:14pm

Superfamilies moved...

And I attempted to integrate all of the content of the "Moths" guide page onto the Lepidoptera page, but I hope someone will check my work. Representative Papilionoidea images should be added to the superfamily overview.

… Charley Eiseman, 18 March, 2016 - 5:24am

Can anyone recognize any of the caterpillars

on this old page. It would be nice to get some of these moved into the guide, move the rest to Charley's "Unidentified microlep immature stages" page and finally delete this page. It no longer serves any purpose, but we have been too lazy to move all nine or ten pages of images.

… john and jane balaban, 17 March, 2016 - 7:55pm

One of the requests we got was to name all the superfamilies

so non-experts visiting Lepidoptera have some idea what all those long non-english names mean, so we will do that. We also got a request to remove superfamilies that have only one family. But we have no plan to do that unless lots of folks chime in to say they want it. We don't see that creating any mess, just families and superfamilies on the same taxonomy tab, but we don't see it as our decision to make. Thanks for chiming in with your preference.

… john and jane balaban, 16 March, 2016 - 6:29pm

A third vote for keeping monotypic superfamilies in place

I agree with Charley for the same reasons.

… Steve Nanz, 18 March, 2016 - 2:27pm

A second vote for keeping monotypic superfamilies in place

I find it confusing when I see mixed taxonomic ranks listed at the same level. Sometimes it means that the next rank up is a monotypic one, and sometimes it just means the editor that created the guide page didn't know what higher rank to place it within. Uniformity is nice.

Thanks for getting things moving on this change!

… Charley Eiseman, 16 March, 2016 - 11:03pm

The clickable guide linkage has been changed

We can start moving the moth superfamilies to Lepidoptera a few at a time so as to not overload the system when transferring all those images. But we will wait a few days to give folks a chance to comment if they have not done so yet.
Anyone have an English name we can attach to Acanthopteroctetes unifascia, its family or superfamily? Archaic Sun Moths?? Is there only one family? Do we need the superfamily if there is only one family?

… john and jane balaban, 16 March, 2016 - 3:07pm

Fantastic

Of course, there's no standardized names for moths, but if Acanthopteroctetidae had one it'd be "Archaic sun moths". Acanthopteroctetoidea is a monotypic superfamily containing only the nominate family Acanthopteroctetidae. I would name the family "Archaic sun moths" and leave the superfamily as Acanthopteroctetoidea simply for consistency's sake. No other moth superfamily has a common name on BugGuide.

I would favor leaving monotypic superfamilies in place. Considering the majority of superfamilies in our area (19/32) only contain one family, it would just create a bigger mess.

… Kyhl Austin, 16 March, 2016 - 3:23pm

We have asked John VanDyk to move the linkage

on the black and white clickable guide for the moth image from Moths to Lepidoptera. Will let all know when that has been done.

… john and jane balaban, 16 March, 2016 - 2:42pm

Ah! Excellent! It has people thinking and talking already

before we even got around to explaining.
First, yes, we did that. And it is very easily undone - just delete the new text.
We see it as a first tentative step to reconfiguring all the Lepidoptera as has long been discussed.
The full proposal would include:
1. Changing the black and white moth in the clickable guide to link to the order Lepidoptera page as the caterpillar there now does.
2. Renaming and tagging and moving all the moth superfamilies to the Lepidoptera page a few at a time
3. Thereby reducing the No Taxon Moth page to an information only node with info and books, etc., but no stored images. It might be nice to delete it, but there are so many books and links to it that we are probably better off keeping the node.
Please comment here if you haven't done so already on the several moth forum pages where this has been discussed.
And feel free to delete the added text if folks feel that is best, but it seems like that is the first step in this long campaign to fix the Lepidoptera

… john and jane balaban, 15 March, 2016 - 8:52pm

Awesome!

I was hoping this was what was happening. I've stated my opinion in previous forum posts about this, but this was just changed out of the blue (unless I missed something), so it's why I asked. I am 100% in favor of transitioning to a single all-encompassing "home" page for Lepidoptera. Thanks!

… Kyhl Austin, 16 March, 2016 - 9:50am

I don't know, but...

just FYI, the info page has the following explanation, under "Synonyms and other taxonomic changes":

**Please do not post images to this page.
Unidentified adult images should stay on ID Request until moved to a Family page or deeper.
Unidentified larva images should be placed on the base Lepidoptera page. Thank you**

… John Schneider, 15 March, 2016 - 7:04pm