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Butterfly images - suggestion

Tony Thomas, Tom Murray, and others have done an incredible job these last few weeks identifying all the butterfly images to species. There are a few to go listed in a recent comment below.

We posted this at the beginning of the year
but it quickly got buried and didn't receive any comments. We still think that some groups of insects such as butterflies and maybe most dragonflies shouldn't be moved to the guide unless they are being moved to a species page. If a butterfly image cannot be identified to species, is it really worth keeping in the guide? We're certain there will be some exceptions to this such as images with more than one species, etc. It may be that John can shut down the ability to post to a family, subfamily, or genus page in butterflies except for a few butterfly expert editors.

Maybe it's not worth the trouble, but a year ago there were no butterfly images in the guide that weren't on species pages except for a handful of images. That's no longer true today. It's very difficult to get knowledgeable editors to look at the base butterfly page and move images into the guide (there are about 10 pages of misc images on Superfamily Papilionoidea - Butterflies. It doesn't seem likely that we will ever get them to search through the hundreds of pages of butterfly images in the guide to find pages such as Subfamily Hesperiinae - Grass Skippers which now has 30 unidentified or unconfirmed or, at least, not-put-away images.

We are willing to tag and move those images back to the base page so experts only need look in one place, but don't want to do that if others think it is a bad idea. We're just thinking it is more likely that we can get people occasionally to look through the images and comment and/or move them to species pages if they are all in one place rather than distributed throughout the guide.
Any guidance for us?

 
Winter's here
So let's give it a couple of weeks before making any changes. I think that I, and others, can place most of the butterfly images (and any orphan ode images) into a least a genus page. Skippers are an exception and they may have to go into a subfamily or even the family page. Once images are in genera it will allow experts, such as Dr. David Wright for the Azures, to quickly locate images in need of identification to species.
Moving everything into Superfamily Papilionidae - Butterflies is counterproductive.

 
Sounds like a plan, we'll wait till others
decide what needs to be done. Meanwhile we scrolled through all 195 pages of butterflies and found most (if not all) of the pages that have images which are not identified to species. Here's where you will have to direct the experts:
Papilio, - Erynnis, - Hesperiinae, - Speyeria, - Nymphalinae, - Phyciodes, - Limenitis, - Asterocampa, - Lycaenidae, - Lycaeninae, - Polyommatinae, - Celastrina, - Lycaeides, - Coliadinae, - and Colias
Great - noticed you already started putting some away, Tony, that's terrific. If you need any Frassed, just let us know which ones and we'll move them.
We went through the base page and moved all the images we could to the pages listed above. That should make it easier to focus as you and the other experts move things into the guide. If no one adds a comment to this message, we will delete the listed pages as they are emptied. More from Tom Murray too! Great! 5 pages already cleared up! Don't forget to look at the base butterfly page also. Lots of Whites and Parnassus too!

 
Hi J&J
As Tom has already added a comment I guess you can't edit your original. Thus no harm in me commenting here.
I asked Dr. David Wright to look at this year's Azures. Seems we did OK on the ID's. Of the 38 new adult images only 4 were mis-identified. Robin's caterpillar images were ID'd as Late Spring Azure and a new county record.

 
Great work!
Getting all those new azures put away makes BugGuide a great resource for studying the differences among the species and forms. You and Tom are doing a great job on the butterfly images. Thanks again,

OK, here's the rundown for you experts who have been holding back. Tony and Tom have cleared most of the butterfly images and moved them to the species pages. By the way, we're talking about twenty pages worth or so, so they have moved three or four hundred images in the last few days! Big Thanks!

Here's where BugGuide still needs help from experts: (you can use the links in the comment above to click directly there)
Papilio - still a dozen caterpillars and chrysales for those who might know them,
- Erynnis - 1 worn specimen left and maybe it should be frassed ??,
- Hesperiinae - less than a page of these tough skippers still to go !!,
- Speyeria - 7 of those confusing western species - anyone know them?
- Nymphalinae - just 3 chrysales,
- Phyciodes - DONE !!,
- Limenitis - 7 of those confusing caterpillars,
- Asterocampa - a pair of caterpillar images,
- Lycaenidae - about 15 caterpillars with three more at Lycaeninae,
- Polyommatinae - more caterpillars and a couple pinned adults,
- Celastrina - DONE! and proofed by Dr David Wright - see above,
- Lycaeides, Coliadinae, and Colias all DONE!

Don't forget to look at the base butterfly page also. Still a couple of dozen images, about half catterpillars and chrysales for those of you who have worked with them in butterfly gardens.

 
Hesperiinae
The first 2 pages are ones that I couldn't identify, because of the angle or poor quality. Some should be frassed, but I don't like to be the one that does that. I'll check more when I have some time.

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