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"Small" is an unhelpful term – there are plenty of smaller butterflies

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I have nothing in my guide books on the size. Can you help? If you can't I'd suggest putting back the "small" so at least there is a certain size reference point.Viren (talk) 03:17, 26 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Viren, it's not an easy question! First, the Lepidoptera vary in wingspan over 2 orders of magnitude, from 3mm or less in some leaf miners to 280mm for the largest birdwings. The smallest butterflies are 12mm in span. I'd prefer to describe the size explicitly (as I did in the Euplagia quadripunctaria article) without commenting on it.
So, how to proceed? If we could agree on Wikipedia what constituted a "very small", "small", "medium", "large" or "very large" lepidopteran, then perhaps we could apply our categories across the board. Even so, we might find that some people (e.g. in Britain, where the extremes of size range less widely) object to calling a particular species "medium-sized", if it happens to be the largest in the BI. And would we need a different scale for the butterflies and the moths? (The small blue for example is the smallest British butterfly, but is a pretty average size for a moth.)
However, this is a debate for the Lepidoptera Project as a whole, not for one species ... hence my comment. Perhaps we should include a 'standardised' size measurement (the moth guides seem to agree on forewing length) for every lepidopteran article? --Wally Tharg (talk) 09:01, 26 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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