Diario del proyecto Moths of Oklahoma

Lepidoptera is the order of insects that includes moths and butterflies. There are about 180,000 known species within this order, the majority of which (90-95%) are moths. This huge number is broken up into 126 families and 46 superfamilies.

I thought it would be interesting to spend a little time looking at the taxonomical breakdown of our "Moths of Oklahoma" project. We have the most observations from the following superfamilies (bold) and families:

• Noctuoidea (2514 observations; 318 species)
  • Erebidae (1259 observations; 131 species)
  • Noctuidae (1027 observations; 157 species)
• Pyraloidea (948 observations; 139 species)
  • Crambidae (685 observations; 98 species)
  • Pyralidae (239 observations; 41 species)
• Geometroidea (663 observations; 89 species)
  • Geometridae (661 observations; 88 species)
• Bombycoidea (518 observations; 46 species)
  • Sphingidae (363 observations; 32 species)
  • Saturniidae (153 observations; 13 species)

A couple of quick notes:

1. I pulled these numbers at the beginning of February 2019. They can and will change over time as more Oklahoma observations of Lepidoptera are submitted to iNaturalist.
2. I am omitting a lot of superfamilies and families and only listing the most populous (those with more than 600 observations). For instance, we have Oklahoma observations in 6 families within the Noctuoidea superfamily, but I only listed the two with significant numbers.
3. Something that I have gleaned after looking at all of these family and superfamily names is that superfamilies end in "-idea" while families end in "-idae."

I plan to do a separate post on each of the 7 families list above. Stay tuned for each of those posts!