New Moths Web Resource

[John Snyder]

I am pleased to announce a new Web resource for people interested in the
moths of North America.  I have compiled a quite large list of links to
images of both larvae (caterpillars) and adults of the species covered by
the Hodges checklist.  Entitled ?Web Images of North American Moth
Species,? it can be viewed and used at this web address

          http://www.furman.edu/~snyder/leplist/

Rather than containing the actual images, it puts together a list of links
that send you to the images at other sites.  It is arranged by family,
genus, and species according to the order of the Hodges checklist
(therefore, in a logical taxonomic sequence).  It can be searched by any of
these categories.

Although I used an efficient web-searching tool (Hotbot, usually), and
looked for every genus listed by Hodges, the resulting set provides images
for only about 5% of the known North American species.  It is obvious that
those of us with useful images and/or the facilities to place them on the
web still have a long way to go if we want the web to become a very useful
source of information about this group of animals.  There is particular
need to provide images of moth species that are neither ?showy? or of
economic importance.

Even the most efficient web-searching tool misses many sites.  If you know
of web images of species that I did not find, please let me know about
them.  I will be constantly updating and refreshing the list.

If you try this resource and come up with suggestions for improving it,
please let me know.

John Snyder
Dept. of Biology
Furman University
Greenville, SC USA
john.snyder at furman.edu