A working checklist of butterfly species

The taxonomy and nomenclature of living organisms is constantly changing with our knowledge of the particular taxonomic groups and their systematics. So we have to acknowledge that any static checklist is just a snapshot of our knowledge, and will be out of date pretty soon.

We built a preliminary, working global checklist to use as a reference for our work (see Ferrer-Paris et al 2013 [REF]), but we want to emphasize that we are summarizing data as provided by several authors with different opinions and levels of taxonomic expertise, and who might have different approaches to deal with taxonomic problematic species or species groups. Some regions are better explored than others and some taxonomic groups are better studied than others. There are many checklists available in different sources, and we tried to use the most up-to-date and agreed-upon version, with few additions from recent sources.

  • Papilionoidea we are using the most recent circumscription of this superfamily, including the "true butterflies" (five families), skippers (Hesperiidae) and the butterfly-moths (Hedylidae).
    • Papilionidae

      We are using the checklist from Globis/GART, which includes 2710 names for 554 species (updated until 2010). This one is not available as a list in the original source, but can be navigated through a tree structure or using an index.

    • Hedylidae

      The checklist of Hedylidae from Scoble was published in 1990 [REF]. Hedylidae have been largely considered a sistergroup of Papilionoidea and Hesperioidea, and part of the "Rhopalocera" clade, but are normally not counted as butterflies, and not included in many checklists or compilations. Only recently have been placed within the larger, redefined Papilionoidea [REF]. They form a monobasic family with few species, much of the available information is summarized in the wikipedia page for the family.

    • Hesperiidae

      Currently no updated global checklist available. We include all records from regional checklists (Neotropical, Afrotropical, Australian checklists), and we use data from Markku Savela's website: Lepidoptera and some other Life forms, for the rest of the world.

    • Pieridae
      We are using a combination of the checklist by Globis/GART, which includes 1108 valid species (updated until 2010), and the checklist by Lamas from Taxome, with 1136 species (updated until 2008), but the circumscription of tribes and subtribes within Pierinae follow the Tree of life, which considers recent phylogenetic work for the whole family and various groups of species.
    • Nymphalidae

      We use data from Nymphalidae.NET (which itself gathered data from other sources, specially Markku Savela's website).

    • Riodinidae

      Checklist by Lamas (completed in 2008), available from taxome.
      Includes 3659 names, 1419 species worldwide

    • Lycaenidae

      Currently no updated global checklist available. We include all records from regional checklists (Neotropical, Afrotropical, Australian checklists), and we use data from Markku Savela's website: Lepidoptera and some other Life forms, for the rest of the world.

Scratchpads developed and conceived by (alphabetical): Ed Baker, Katherine Bouton Alice Heaton Dimitris Koureas, Laurence Livermore, Dave Roberts, Simon Rycroft, Ben Scott, Vince Smith