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The insect order Lepidoptera consists of moths and butterflies (43 superfamilies). [1] Most moths are night-flying, while the butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea ) are the mainly day-flying. Within Lepidoptera as a whole, the groups listed below before Glossata contain a few basal families accounting for less than 200 species; the bulk of ...
Lepidoptera (/ ˌ l ɛ p ɪ ˈ d ɒ p t ər ə / LEP-ih-DOP-tər-ə) or lepidopterans is an order of winged insects which includes butterflies and moths.About 180,000 species of the Lepidoptera have been described, representing 10% of the total described species of living organisms, [1] [2] making it the second largest insect order (behind Coleoptera) with 126 families [3] and 46 superfamilies ...
Butterflies have a four-stage life cycle, and like other holometabolous insects they undergo complete metamorphosis. [2] Winged adults lay eggs on the food plant on which their larvae, known as caterpillars, will feed. The caterpillars grow, sometimes very rapidly, and when fully developed, pupate in a chrysalis.
Of the approximately 174,250 lepidopteran species described until 2007, butterflies and skippers are estimated to comprise approximately 17,950, with moths making up the rest. [ 6 ] [ 7 ] The vast majority of Lepidoptera are to be found in the tropics, but substantial diversity exists on most continents.
While the butterflies form a monophyletic group, the moths, which comprise the rest of the Lepidoptera, do not. Many attempts have been made to group the superfamilies of the Lepidoptera into natural groups, most of which fail because one of the two groups is not monophyletic: Microlepidoptera and Macrolepidoptera, Heterocera and Rhopalocera, Jugatae and Frenatae, Monotrysia and Ditrysia.
Order Megaloptera – 250–300 (Alderflies, dobsonflies, and fishflies) Order Neuroptera – 5,000 (Net-winged insects) Order †Protomecoptera; Order †Tarachoptera; Order †Permotrichoptera; Order Lepidoptera – 174,250 (Butterflies and moths) Order Trichoptera – 12,627 (Caddisfly) Order †Paratrichoptera; Order †Protodiptera ...
The moths (mostly nocturnal) and butterflies (mostly diurnal) together make up the taxonomic order Lepidoptera. This list is sorted by MONA number (sometimes called a Hodges number), a numbering system for North American moths introduced by Ronald W. Hodges , et al. in 1983 in the publication Check List of the Lepidoptera of America North of ...
The scales on butterfly wings are pigmented with melanins that can produce the colours black and brown. The white colour in the butterfly family Pieridae is a derivative of uric acid, an excretory product. [13] [40]: 84 Bright blues, greens, reds, and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but through the microstructure of the scales.