Hodges Number

Hodges et al includes Butterflies in their "Check List of Lepidoptera of NA" with numbers. This text was published in 1983. However, the data for it were compiled up to the end of 1978! Although with an earlier publication date, a more recent list, with numbers, was published in 1981 by Miller & Brown "A Catalogue/Checklist of the Butterflies of America North of Mexico". This publication gives numbers to 763 species. I believe it has been the standard list for a long time. In 1986, Scott published his "The Butterflies on NA" which became the standard text. He numbered each species and goes up to #679. This is the latest numbered list I could find.
As most of these texts are probably not available to most contributors to BugGuide, the numbering system contained therein are probably of little use. Scott's book is possibly the most useful as it has colour plates for the species, distribution maps for each species, and lots of natural history data, and each species is given a number. The subtitle of the book is "A Natural History and Field Guide"; it's 583 pages.
I can't think of anyway to get any of these checklist numbers for butterflies apart from going directly to the books themselves.
You can get the Hodges # for moths from Bob Patterson's MPG plates.

Anthony W. Thomas

I usually google for it. James Dalton's Georgia Lepidoptera site has them also, for the ones that occur here in Georgia anyways.

I spent some time looking when I added the Hodges number field, in hopes that I might be able to automatically pull it in. I didn't find anything at the time.