Thanks to the generosity and good work of Franz Pühringer and Axel Kallies, the checklist for #Sesiidae (clearwing #moths) will be brought up to date in #CatalogueOfLife this month. This will expand the number of listed species by around 400 and update many old names and synonyms.

Original data: http://www.sesiidae.net/Checklst.htm

Processed in #Python to deliver a COL Data Package: https://www.checklistbank.org/dataset/55353/classification?taxonKey=1

Many more families still to fix in the COL Lepidoptera ...

Another update to Global Lepidoptera Index / #CatalogueOfLife / @gbif - the family #Psychidae (#bagworm #moths):

https://stangeia.hobern.net/updating-global-lepidoptera-index-for-psychidae/

The vast majority of names for this group in the old LepIndex dataset are no longer considered current. The update added 30% more accepted species for the family.

I shut myself away and updated the checklist dataset (Global Lepidoptera Index) that feeds species names into #CatalogueOfLife and @gbif for the moth subfamily Elachistinae (based on Lauri Kaila's 2019 catalogue: https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4632.1.1).

This modernises perhaps 1/300th of the #Lepidoptera names in COL but serves to highlight just how much work is needed to produce a truly comprehensive and modern list for biodiversity informatics usage.

My blog post reviews the case: https://stangeia.hobern.net/updating-global-lepidoptera-index-for-elachistinae/

@rdmpage @gbif Ok - I have the "library" spreadsheet. I'll process it in #Python since author names in the #CatalogueOfLife dataset have been corrected with accents and these need the same fix.

The plan:

1. Match unique references with same authors+year+page range

2. Manually fix any with multiple potential matches

3. For remainder find candidates with correct author and year and review those

4. Normalise references

5. For completeness, include references without nomenclatural acts

@dhobern @gbif I see that the original database has full citations for many references http://www.tortricidae.com/library.asp so presumably the curators could supply proper citations that are easier to map to persistent identifiers. I know I'm a broken record on this, but why do we persist in treating the taxonomic literature as a second class citizen in our databases? #CatalogueOfLife

Many thanks to Todd Gilligan, Joaquin Baixeras and John W. Brown for all their work on Tortricid.net. I've been working with them to get it into a form that can feed into #CatalogueOfLife and @gbif

This will be a major improvement for how data on leafroller #moths (#Lepidoptera #Tortricidae) are organised online. It's 25 years more current than LepIndex.

Browse or download here:

https://www.checklistbank.org/dataset/219318/about

@DrLu_Musetti Hi Lu - do you by any chance know of anyone who has/maintains a reasonably current taxonomic/nomenclatural dataset for the #Nymphalidae and who would be interested in working with #CatalogueOfLife and @gbif to replace the lists they currently use from LepIndex? Nymphalidae have some of the most challenging issues around synonymy and species delimitation.

Hi @meganlynch - I potter around at the edge of those topics.

I work on global species lists in the context of #CatalogueOfLife (and #GBIF and similar), so I care greatly about old-school botany, in particular #taxonomy and #systematics.

I also work on improving access to #data from #plant #phenotyping studies (mostly crops).

I have just uploaded a few corrections and many additional national-scale distribution data records for plume moth species listed in the Catalogue of World Pterophoridae - https://pterophoroidea.hobern.net/ and many-plume moth species in the Catalogue of World Alucitoidea - https://alucitoidea.hobern.net/.

Both feed into #CatalogueOfLife and help to organise data in #GBIF.

I now have some useful #Python scripts to help me import distribution data more quickly from national/regional treatments.

@gbif