Welcome
to CATE Sphingidae...

CATE
Sphingidae aims to produce an interactive taxonomic monograph of the hawkmoth
family, Sphingidae.

You
will find a comprehensive catalogue of the whole family, with illustrations and
diagnoses of almost all known species, that will enable you to identify them
with confidence.

Our
further aim is to encourage the wider community to become involved with the
project, share their information and images, and even propose changes to the
classification that will be peer reviewed for possible inclusion in a new
version of the classification.

Introducing hawkmoths

The
hawkmoths form a family of some 1400 species of small to very large moths
occurring on all continents except Antarctica.
They are most often observed, elegant and streamlined, hovering in front of
flowers feeding, or as large caterpillars with a conspicuous horn at the rear
end. As a result, hawkmoths are a popular group with both amateur and
professional naturalists.

For
more about the biology and classification of hawkmoths, click here.

Introducing CATE

CATE
stands for Creating a Taxonomic E-science. It is a 3-year project, funded by
the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), with the goal of developing
the technologies to put not only the product of taxonomic research onto
the web, but the process, involving the user community, to propose and
review changes.

One
animal group (the Sphingidae) and one plant group (the arum lilies, Araceae -
you can find them at CATE-Araceae)
were selected to test the feasibility of the approach. To read more about the
CATE project go to the CATE-project
website.

The CATE Sphingidae team

The
team responsible for providing the information for this version of CATE
Sphingidae includes scientists at the Natural
History Museum, London and a software developer based at the University of Oxford.

Click
here for details of
the team.

How to get involved

To
be successful CATE needs the active involvement of the user community to
provide data, propose taxonomic changes, review proposals, and join an
editorial or advisory group. We warmly invite you to join.

There
are various ways to get involved with CATE Sphingidae. You can join the mailing list,
contribute to the wiki,
register as a user,
or e-mail Ian Kitching or Vladimir Bladogerov of the CATE-Sphingidae team.