Australian Moths Online is now available on the Atlas of Living Australia, providing reliably identified images of selected Australian moths.
Our new Australian Moths Online website is now live.
Mallee moths are part of the family Oecophoridae and are closely connected to eucalypt forests and woodlands.
Mallee moths are part of the family Oecophoridae and are closely connected to eucalypt forests and woodlands.
Australia has around 22 000 species of moths. Around half of these have been scientifically named. Australian Moths Online does not include images of all described species and deliberately excludes species that have not been described.
Please keep in mind that reliably identified images are a valuable tool for identifying specimens, but a simple comparison with images has its limitations and can’t replace professional identification based on a detailed morphological examination and comparison with a reference collection.
The images on Australian Moths Online are searchable and are grouped into family albums. Subfamily albums are also arranged in alphabetical order within their families.
Within each family and subfamily album, species albums are arranged alphabetically, based on the combination of genus and species name. A species album may contain several images if the species is variable, such as sexually dimorphic or if both its upper and under-side markings are particularly informative.
Image captions include genus and species name, author, year of publication, family, sex, locality, date, collector and collection.
Moths regarded as pests in Australia can be found by running a search on ‘pest'. A list of images, names and data for each pest species on the site will appear. Clicking on the image will provide an expanded image to accompany the data.
Len Willan, who collected moths throughout his life and was often faced with the challenge of identifications, is the driving force behind this web site. He spends countless hours photographing specimens in his own collection and the Australian National Insect Collection (ANIC) as well as giving those images a finishing touch and entering data. He is also happy to respond to any queries sent to ozmoths@bigpond.com.
All data, from localities to species identifications, were subsequently verified by Ted Edwards and Marianne Horak in the ANIC.
Others involved in establishing this and/or previous versions of this site are Glenn Cocking, Andrew Wright, Lilys Koesmarno, Brennan Arrold and Andreas Zwick.
Relatively little has been published on Australian moths, aside from original descriptions of specimens (which are often incomplete) and scientific studies on selected groups. However, we can recommended the following:
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