Talk:Butterfly

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[edit] Origin of the word

Modern Dutch certainly does not have a word like flutterby', the word in vlinder. There are a number of dialects with words that de contain the element boter-, but it is not thought that that has anything to do with milk. nl:Gebruiker:Jcwf. See also discussion on Dutch Vlinder page.

I wonder why Tannin changed the plural form "Praying mantids" to the singular form "Praying mantis" under the list of predators. Do you perhaps notice that all the other items in the list are plural (i.e., "Flies", "Ants", "Beetles", etc.)? --Jose Ramos 13:53, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Mantid is not the plural form. A mantid is a member of the Mantis genus, and if any thing is more singular than mantis (Chambers dictionary). jimfbleak

If you read what I wrote above, I said that "mantids" (which is plural) was changed to "mantis" (which is singular). I suppose one could say "mantises", or "mantes", but I think "mantids" is the best choice. In any case, a plural form is called for to conform with the rest of the list. --Jose Ramos 18:28, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)


Mantes would be good Latin, but mantids sounds like it refers to members of the broader mantis-oid family.

[edit] Colors

You might add some information on the source of the colors. In some cases, this is due to pigment, but the iridescent colors of many species (e.g. I think the Morpho shown here) are due to "structural" color: Bragg reflection (constructive interference of the reflected light) from periodic microstructures in the wing scales. See e.g. L. P. Biró et al., Phys. Rev. E 67, 021907 (2003). —Steven G. Johnson 23:29, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Scales

It is untrue to say that butterfly "structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the photonic crystal nature of the scales.[13][14][15]". The term "photonic crystal" is generally understood to be (used as)synonymous with a "photonic band gap material" which is one very specific and comparatively rare kind of colour-producing structure-

see e.g. H. Ghiradella, "Hairs Bristles and Scales" in "Microscopic anatomy of Invertebrates", M. Locke (Ed) Vol 11A: Insecta, John Wiley and Sons, New Yorks, 1998, H.Ghiradella "Fine Structure of Basic Lepidopteran Scales" Chapter 3 in "Structural colors in biological systems- principles and applications" Ed. S. Kinoshita and S. Yoshioka, Osaka University Press, 2005, or V. L. Welch "Photonic crystals in biology", Chapter 2 in "Structural colors in biological systems- principles and applications" Ed. S. Kinoshita and S. Yoshioka, Osaka University Press, 2005,

Although one or two authors sometimes use the term "photonic structure" to mean any kind of colour-producing structure, it is not generally used this way and maintaining the distinction is relevant because photonic crystals have different optical properties from other colour producing structures and appear to be formed by different bio-assembly mechanisms. Photonic crystals are actually a fairly rare kind of colour producing structure in the living world, compared with for example multi-layer reflectors or even diffraction gratings. The 3 references cited in support of this statement do not support it- they are simply examples of colour-producing structures.

Please correct this sentence, therefore, to something like "structural coloration is the result of coherent scattering of light by the highly regular microstructure of the scales".

V. L. Welch, University of Namur. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.48.16.169 (talk) 17:16, 22 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit]

markers

I've taken out the <div> encoding because on my screen (so presumably other people's) it was generating huge amounts of whitespace at the head of the article, alongside the taxobox - not sure why. seglea 05:39, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Lifespan?

Some information on the length of each part of the lifecycle would be nice...

How long does it take to go from egg to pupa, chrysalis to butterfly, etc.?

I would also like to know this please as it is the specific information i am searching for.

  • This varies from species to species and is highly temperature dependent. It can also vary within the species by time of year -- some pupae will emerge directly while others later in the season will overwinter. There is no way to summarize this at this taxonomic level. Satyrium 12:25, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pictures

If somebody could determinate the species, the GFDL pictures on User:Donarreiskoffer/butterflies might be useful.

[edit] Photographs

I just added some photographs to the gallery. I'm no expert (to put it mildly) and I've only managed to get one butterfly identified, the Glasswing. Now I'm not sure, though, if that is a Godyris duillia or a Ithomiini (or is it both, at different levels of the taxonomic tree? Like I said, I'm no expert). The other two I haven't a clue, so if anyone knows...

For more photos that need identifying (not of butterflies, though) see User:DirkvdM/Photographs#Plants_and_Animals. DirkvdM 09:18, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dutch?

Under etymology it says the Old English word was buttorfleoge and a similar word occurs in Dutch. What is that Dutch word? I'm Dutch and I don't know it. Might it be old Dutch? The modern word is 'vlinder'. The Dutch article (which, by the way, has some beautiful images of the tongue and scales) doesn't mention it. DirkvdM 09:12, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

This article Dialectbenamingen voor de vlinder states that a word such as botervlieg couldn't be found, but a lot of words like vlieboter, vliebouter, vliewouter exist(ed) in Dutch, which makes it very probable the English word is an inversion of something corresponding to *flybutter and stems from Germanic *fîfaldrôn (cf. German Falter, related to Latin papilio). Everything else (such as yellowish excrements of caterpillars, or witches sending out butterflies to steal butter) is funny folklore but no sound etymology.--84.188.174.176 18:51, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Butterfly photos

Could we please avoid photos of obviously mounted specimens placed in supposedly natural settings? The Peacock and Comma photos can be clearly seen to be of dead and mounted butterflies by their unnatural wing positions.

[edit] Change of Photos

I propose to change the two unidentified photos of a Papilionid and Nympnalid and replace them (as of now) with a Pierid, Common Jezebel (Delias eucharis) and Lycaenid, Red Pierrot, (Talicada nyseus). I am also considering better photos or other species. Inadvertantly Nymphalids and Papilionids appear to be over-represented, probably, because they have such beautiful butterflies :). I shall make the changes after a week or so. Any views please? If you do, please log them in this talk page itself. If there are no views or objections, I will unilaterally go ahead after ten days. AshLin 14:01, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree. It is fine for me.→Carlosp420 14:23, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Before I could get myself to change any photos the text distressed me. On the face of it everything is fine, but see the features of quality articles listed in the WikiProjects Arthropod such as Krill or Spider. Gave me an inferiority complex! This article stands out like a misshapen potato. We got to make it much, much better. :
  • It does not read either for a beginner or for a informed user.
  • The sequencing did not seem logical, so I have made an initial change.
  • Lots of interesting facts about butterflies such as aposematism, mimicry etc do not find place.
  • Butterfly anatomy is ignored (see Krill for a concise diagram and description).
  • 'Wing development in larva' and some taxonomic issues are over detailed compared to the rest of the article. They need to be moved out once appropriate articles on these emerges.
  • Not enough, interesting, good enough, well chosen photos.
  • A very American flavour, needs neutral point and global point of view.
Considering that Butterflies is a much more traditional, popular and fertile field than Krill, it distresses me that we are nowhere near good enough. This is a clarion call to battle. All you aurelians out there lets pitch in and make this worthy of being called a feature article. FlaME ME IF YOU LIKE BUT BUNG IN STUFF, IDEAS, PHOTOS, TEXTS. Let this page shine forth!

AshLin 05:07, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] A new nice resource to see and use

Lt Col C.T. Bingham, late of the Indian Army, wrote two seminal texts on Indian Butterflies. They are :- Fauna of British India - Butterflies, Vol 1 (1905) and Vol 2 (1907).

Unfortunately only three families were dealt with before he passed away - Papilionidae, Pieridae and Lycaenidae. The work is in public domain and the books are available as 30 MB downloads. The Indian Butterfly Wiki-endeavour has uploaded some woodcut images into WM Commons for use in the articles. We have arranged them in a nice gallery there at :-

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bingham%27s_Fauna_of_British_India_%28Butterflies%29

Since we dont have all our stubs up yet, we are yet to use many of them, but do visit the following link to see how using two woodcut images has added a touch of class to our articles :-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Butterflies_of_India_%28Papilionidae%29

Presentation does matter folks. Please use these images wherever you can and make our effort of uploading 54 of them worthwhile.

Regards, AshLin 15:06, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandals as stakeholders (TIC)

(Tongue in cheek) Considering that this page has been vandalised a number of times, I realise that :-

  • by definition, they are stakeholders in our environment.
  • we provide a harmless, free and valuable recreational service to them.
  • they create extra work for us so that we dont become fat and lazy.
  • they give sense of purpose to the counter-vandalism unit.

They have actually made more changes and spent more eyeball time on this page than genu-wine wikipedia editors. I think I'll propose a vandalism barnstar to this talk page, dedicated to all who have vandalised this page.

Facing only one problem though - choice of image. 'Dead butterfly', or, 'blue morpho from stub with skull and crossbones over it'. You guys can post your views on this.AshLin 16:21, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Asia -> Orient

Asia as a region is too large and definetly unacceptable in the context. Orient is correct but it has a number of connotations which could get confusing. Reverted to Orient till a better option is found.

[edit] Interwiki-problem

A lot of the iw-links here seem to go to various pages describing the entire order of Lepidoptera rather than Butterflies.--81.234.166.95 15:23, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Yet another photograph

I'd like to propose this spectacular image, Image:Butterfly_macro_shot.jpg, for the taxobox (possibly with a crop), but it's unidentified. Anyone care to classify it? Sandstein 17:33, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Its a swallowtail butterfly, cant id the species accurately. AshLin 18:16, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Photographs

Hello I have a few closeup butterfly pictures, they are under creative commoms licence. I don't know much about butterflies, I'd be glad if anyone could classify them and use them here. http://flickr.com/photos/pankaj/tags/butterfly/

[edit] Rhopalocera in Taxobox

A user reading the Taxobox will see "Division: Rhopalocera" above "Phylum: Arthropoda", even though the former is rightly listed after the latter in the code. I presume this is because "Division" is interpreted as a plant division, equivalent to an animal phylum. Apart from redesignating Rhopalocera an unranked taxon, is there any way to reshuffle this sequence? Cephal-odd 05:23, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] request for protection

I have noticed this page is vandalized A LOT! So I have put in a request for protection on an administrator page. I originally put the "protection tag" at the top, but it doesn't seem to be stopping the twits from doing it. When it is “officially” protected, anonymous users without accounts or those with accounts under 4 days old will not be able to edit this page. This will cut down on the Vandalism from outside users. And if an established user does vandalize it, all we have to do is report them and after several warnings on their user page, their account will be deleted. Then they won’t be able to edit any protected articles if they don’t have an account!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (!Mi luchador nombre es amoladora de la carne y traigo el dolor! 22:26, 17 October 2006 (UTC))

And what to do about old vandal users like Sholt.60, which is vandalizing several butterfly pages. Carlosp420 16:36, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
You are supposed to give them several warnings on their talk page, which you get from the vandalism template page. If they pass up four (I think), you put their name on the vandal page and they are blocked from editing for a period of time. If they keep on doing it, then their account will be deleted. But I'm sure the administrators will give them every chance to reform before they delete his account. But if he is an "old vandal", I doubt he will reform. (!Mi luchador nombre es amoladora de la carne y traigo el dolor! 17:03, 18 October 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Parthenogenesis

Does anyone know if there are any parthenogenetic butterflies ? Any references ? Shyamal 08:18, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Animated gif/png images

Although these can be useful for demonstrating certain ideas, I wonder what the opinion on creating image slideshows is ? It appears distracting and often hard to examine the correctness of images shown apart from being useless in other media such as print. Would personally opt to remove such images in favour of a gallery of the constituent images if absolutely needed. Shyamal 05:08, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

In the absence of comments, have removed the animated gifs. Shyamal 13:29, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Butterfly flight (citations needed)

The article states that butterfly flight is well understood and quantified. It points to Insect flight for more information and here there is a reference

  • Srygley, R. B. and A. L. R. Thomas (2002) Aerodynamics of insect flight: flow visualisations with free flying butterflies reveal a variety of unconventional lift-generating mechanisms. Nature 420: 660-664. PDF

Flying insects generate forces that are too large to be accounted for by conventional steady-state aerodynamics1,2. To investigate these mechanisms of force generation, we trained red admiral butterflies, Vanessa atalanta, to fly freely to and from artificial flowers in a wind tunnel, and used high-resolution, smoke-wire flow visualizations to obtain qualitative, high-speed digital images of the air flow around their wings. The images show that free-flying butterflies use a variety of unconventional aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force: wake capture, two different types of leading-edge vortex, active and inactive upstrokes, in addition to the use of rotational mechanisms and the Weis–Fogh ‘clap-and-fling’ mechanism. Free-flying butterflies often used different aerodynamic mechanisms in successive strokes. There seems to be no one ‘key’ to insect flight, instead insects rely on a wide array of aerodynamic mechanisms to take off, manoeuvre, maintain steady flight, and for landing.

This seems to be contrary to the statements given in the paragraph on flight. Hope someone can add citations to support the statements made there. Shyamal 13:28, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Modified the flight section to more conventional understanding with citation. Shyamal 15:05, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Morpho rhetenor helena?

The label in the picture captioned "Morpho rhetenor helena" says "Morpho anaxibia". Shinobu 18:58, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

The Dutch wiki captions this picture:

as Morpho Helena. Looks like the same species to me, but I may be mistaken. Shinobu 19:19, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Butterfly alphabet ????

Is this section(butterfly alphabet) really necessary. I really dont see any real relevance --Viren 15:23, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

It came with a non-free image of the butterfly alphabet. The image got deleted but the text has stayed. Shyamal 01:03, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I just got a warning for removing that ridiculous, obviously incorrect section about butterflies being related to peanut butter and "dating back to 'the period of ripped jeans.'" Why is that? That erroneous information is visible from a mile away! If Wiki wants to suffer in reputation for not even being able to maintain a reasonably cogent entry on the butterfly, then it can. Idiots.

Thanks for spotting it. This article is so constantly attacked by vandals without logged on user names that your edit was probably recognized as one. Shyamal 01:48, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge with moth

As butterflies and moths are basically the same, wouldn't it be a good idea to merge the two articles, and add a section that discusses the two terms? A book I have called 'Animals: A Definitive Visual Guide' says 'There is no clear-cut difference between butterflies and moths - and no scientific basis for separating them'. It then goes on to discuss the differences they tend to have.

There are actually moths that have more in common with butterflies, and don't conform to the general rules and vice versa.--Jcvamp 18:57, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Request for Identification

I figured that this was the best place to ask; I just uploaded a picture to the commons of a butterfly that was in my lawn here in Saskatoon, Canada. Can anyone ID it? :)

-- Limulus 09:17, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Based on some of the other images in the commons, could it be some variant of Limenitis arthemis? -- Limulus 09:30, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Based on a Google translation of this page[1] it does appear to be Limenitis arthemis arthemis If I'm wrong though, feel free to correct me on its page :) -- Limulus 09:44, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] See Talk:Moth

Here's the link to a discussion I brought up related to this article. þ 20:34, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

-Actually disregard the above statement, I see the cladistics are represented; wow this is a good article! þ 20:46, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Need help indentifying some butterflies

I recently took a trip to the Cleveland Botanical Gardens, where their Costa Rican Glasshouse contains over 20 different butterfly species. I took some nice photographs, but I need help identifying the butterflies. Once I get the names right, I'll upload high-res copies of the photos to Wikipedia for this article. Can you please help? MamaGeek (talk/contrib) 11:54, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Keep an eye out for responses here Wikipedia:WikiProject Lepidoptera/Unidentified pictures. Shyamal 14:37, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
You can have a go at this website [2], choose clearwing butterflies on the left and follow the instructions. Shyamal 14:44, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unidentified Specimen Photographs

I'm of the opinion external links to pages of unidentified butterfly photos add nothing to this article. Nickrz 12:35, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Feel free to remove such uninformative external links. A lot are added for publicity by the website / blog owners and its hard to keep an eye on every edit. Shyamal 01:51, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Citation needed

"The adults, caterpillars and pupas of some species form part of the diet in many parts of the world." Statement removed in the absence of citations. Is it diet of humans or of insectivores ? Replace appropriately with citation. Shyamal 08:48, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Image Quality; Cropping and Identification

In my humble opinion, the denizens of Wikipedia should require images of the highest quality be displayed in their articles. I have removed many images which I consider poor quality and lacking in content for these reasons:

  • Poor resolution, tiny images. In this day of ubiquitous digital cameras, we should have a plethora of good quality, in focus, high resolution photographs or drawings that display notable diagnostic features.
  • Poor cropping. Large pictures of flowers or landscapes with tiny butterflies may look nice, but are not conducive to an encyclopedia article. Yes, of course, we need and like artistic photographs and compositions, but the subject, after all, is "butterflies", not "flowers."
  • Is the subject identifiable? Of course, we are all kidding ourselves: Except for the highest quality macrophotographs which are fortunate enough to show distinct diagnostic features of well-known and well-defined species, most photographs do not convey enough information for conclusive identification to species level. That being said, I'm of the opinion enough diagnostic tools exist that gross (if unintentional) misidentifications will be weeded out by the users, and that we need not suffer large thumbnails designated "some kind of metalmark" or similar vague captioning.

Photographs should display enough diagnostic markings or have enough research or provenance behind them that a person reasonably well-versed in butterfly identification would not disagree; I think the place to document an identification is on the description page at Wikimedia Commons, not in the caption of a picture gallery. At the very least, I would think, a location and date of a photograph should be included, no? Thank you for listening.Nickrz 13:56, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

  • What was wrong with this image, which has been removed (perhaps by someone else)? MamaGeek (talk/contrib) 03:47, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Heliconius
Heliconius

[edit] Etymology of word

I had read that there was conflicting origins of the word butterfly, and that it was one of the oldest compound words. Could someone add it to the article? I do not see any information on it other than http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Butterfly#Etymology. 202.172.126.182 (talk) 00:46, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Need to know

I dont know anything about butterflies myself, i have spotted this beautiful species in my garden which I have never seen it before. It's red and dark grey in colour, it's got two red lines on outer parts of the wings with two red dots on the ends, middle of the wings are all red. Please could someone tell me more about this beautiful butterfly and it's name. Thanks & Kind Regards Monica —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.154.9.120 (talk) 10:06, 8 June 2008 (UTC)