The Witt Catalogue - A Taxonomic Atlas
of the Eurasian and North African
The Witt Catalogue - A Taxonomic Atlas
of the Eurasian and North African
Noctuoidea
Noctuoidea
An Iconography of all Eurasian and North African species of the superfamily Noctuoidea (Lepidoptera)
Objectives
Taxonomic delimitation
- The superfamily in our sense contains all four large phyletic trunks , the traditional Noctuidae with the associated Arctiidae (sensu lato) and Lymantriidae and the notodontoid clades (Notodontidae, Thaumetopoeidae).
- The area to be covered includes all parts of Eurasia (except Papua New Guinea), the Canary Isles and the Azores, and countries of North Africa adjacent to the Mediterranean Sea.
- In order to keep the scientific standard very high, the revision of the generic and species-level taxa is required.Editors are optimistic enough to plan the treatment of all noctuid groups occurring in the target area, from the bestknown trifine subfamilies to the never revised, highly diverse quadrifine ones like Herminiinae, Hypeninae,Sarrothripinae, Nolinae, Eustrotiinae, etc.
- The text is short and operative, providing precise and detailed taxonomic background: full synonymy and effective diagnosis, giving the chance for all readers to find and identify any described species occurring in this vast biogeographic region, since the distribution of the taxa will be given only by text. No molecular taxonomic information would be discussed, partly because of the lack of such information for the majority of the species.
- Our intention is to publish wonderful books which the public would take into hand with joy. The colour illustrations should be as beautiful and informative as possible, as well as the genitalia plates. So, the books will contain many high quality pictures: colour plates of two enlarged specimens of each taxa (a male and a female if available), a larger material of all species of natural size displaying the individual and/or the geographic variation, and genitalia figures of each species and each available sex). The types of each taxa will be, of course, studied and documented during the revision of the given group but as they are often in bad condition they will be published only if we cannot find other and satisfactorily recognisable specimen(s).