'Moths' not a search option

Hi,
I’m used to dividing the butterflies and moths in ‘butterflies’ and ‘moths’. All butterflies (i think) can be found by searching for ‘papilionoidae’ or ‘butterflies’. There doesn’t seem to be a similar searchterm for ‘moths’, or is there?
I think it’s nice to be able to only check papilionoidae or only moths in a query; one i’m familiar with, the other i’m trying my best to learn more about.

Is that just me or is it already there or…

hope to hear from you
cheers
G erben

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Turns out that “moth” isn’t really a taxonomic group. It’s basically all of the Lepidoptera that we don’t call butterflies, so there isn’t a group name for them. I haven’t figured out how to set up the search engine to do “Lepidoptera minus Papilionoidea” or some such, but there are others here on the site that might be able to help with that.

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While you can not currently do this in iNaturalist’s Observation filter, you can if you create a collection project to accomplish this same task. See the following example: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/moths-of-alabama

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You could put moth in the Description / Tags part of the filter

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I believe this search URL will show all verifiable lepidoptera observations that don’t belong to Papilionoidea: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&taxon_id=47157&without_taxon_id=47224 There might be some observations of butterflies that haven’t been IDed to the Papilionoidea level or below, but it should get you what you want.

I built it using this tutorial: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-use-inaturalists-search-urls-wiki/63

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Thanks Psweet, that was my reasoning too, although i didn’t know how to put it into words without rubbing taxonomists the wrong way. @friel I am trying to see all moth-records in the countries i’m interested in, Japan in this case. Maybe your option works, i’m not familiar with creating projects here.
@bobmcd’s option (460 records for Japan) doesn’t give the total list
However - hooray for url-adjustments - @tiwane’s option seems solid. I checked just now
For Japan there are 10.266 records for ‘butterflies and moths’
2942 is the result of the search for papilionoidae (butterflies)
7324 come up with @tiwane 's search for moths in Japan…
total = 10.266 (also)
query: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=6737&taxon_id=47157&without_taxon_id=47224

thanks for the quick reply and result!
cheers,
G erben

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Have fun in Japan! I visited there for the first time last year and loved it. This was probably the coolest moth I saw: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/17495531

Thanks i’ve been there last year too. After a first visit 10 years ago with only my nokia-cameraphone (best period for spring migration and I had only a few cameraphone photos: biggest mistake in my naturalists-history)

I started ‘training’ by helping Japan-id’s here when i came back to be better prepared next time i will go there (hopefully 2020)

These fern-moths are absolutely gorgeous! (https://italy.observation.org/fotonew/5/11216735.jpg) true!

Hope you’re able to go another time
cheers
G erben

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Thank you for that link. I’ve wondered just how many moths I’ve Id’d on my porch – now I can find out!

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