The nucleus for the Pinned Half Specimen Plates of this family derive from the fine Canadian Government website authored by Don Lafontaine and James Troubridge. Many additional photographs are available at this website, as are much larger photos of the thumbnails shown here. Be sure to put the link to this fine resource in your "favorite places." The Bob Belmont Collection (currently under development) is a special series of plates of full-width pinned specimens. It will be rich in coverage of species found in the southern portion of the United States and especially in the southwest. Half specimen versions of Bob's photos also may be found in the half specimen series. The Living Moths Plates contain photos of adults and larva contributed by a large number of photographers throughout North America and may be expected to grow significantly in coming seasons.

CAUTION: Difficulty of Identifying Moths Based on Photographs

One encounters numerous problems when attempting to identify moths from photographs. Among the Geometridae there are some species groups (Eupithecia, for instance) in which the member species can be identified for the most part only by high magnification of external characters or by internal genitalic examination. You will find among the photos in this plate series many look-alike species. Identifications based on these photographs alone should be made, if at all, with extreme caution and with proper reservation. It might be more proper to label many photos as "tentatively species X," or with qualifiers such as "possibly species X," or simply "species X ??"

Plate Series for the Geometroidea

Systematic Arrangement Within the Geometroidea

The cladogram presented here is based on the arrangement given in Hodges 1983. Alternative arrangements are possible. To prevent the cladogram from becoming very long the rightmost column shows only one genus within each tribe or higher category although a tribe may contain many genera.

Call for Contributions of Photographs

Blanks and/or photos of unspread specimens have been inserted for missing species. These are to be replaced at the first opportunity by photos of typically spread specimens. If you are able to contribute needed photos it will be very much appreciated. If you know of additional species (not listed here) that are attributable to eastern North America, please send that information, with photos, if available, to the Webmaster.

SIZE OF PHOTOGRAPHS: The "window" size for photographs on this series of plates is 150x184 pixels. Thus, photos of fully spread specimens should be about 310 x 235 pixels in size plus a margin of about 1/4 inch or more on all four sides. Photos may be larger but should not be smaller than these dimensions. Final cropping, size reduction and choice of left or right wings to be used will be done by the plate editor.