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About this key

The objective of this Lucid Key for caterpillars is to provide a tool for the identification of caterpillars to family level, with a particular focus on families of biosecurity concern to northern Australia. We have included as many families of Lepidoptera as possible, to make the key broadly applicable to most caterpillars encountered in Australia, either as border interceptions or those collected or even observed by the public, within the limitations of the key (see How to Use).

Note:

This key has been developed for mature, i.e. late instar, larvae and may or may not correctly identify early instars, which can differ substantially from mature larvae.
The key has inbuilt redundancy (585 states in 110 features) that allows for the significant variation that is found within many families.
Not all families of Lepidoptera could be included in this key (see Introduction). These are families of which little or nothing is known about immature stages and that are generally small in size and geographically limited.
The key is a dynamic document and will be updated as more information becomes available over time.

Funding

Development of this key has been funded by the Australian Government Department of Agriculture.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Craig Marston (Department of Agriculture) for administering the project, encouragement and advice, Stacey Anderson (Department of Agriculture) for the loan of specimens of caterpillars of biosecurity concern from the North Australia Quarantine Service (NAQS) Cairns and Darwin collections, and Matt Taylor (lucidcentral.org) for assistance using Lucid Builder v3.6 and Fact Sheet Fusion v2.0

Authors

Diane Moyle and Dr Catherine Byrne*
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
GPO Box 1164, Hobart TAS 7001 Australia
[email protected]
[email protected]

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Please contact the authors directly if you have any comments or suggestions to improve the functionality and/or efficacy of this key.

Version

v1.0 June 2020

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