Talk:Lymantria dispar

Images of stage I larvae

I think it would be beneficial to include some images of the egg sacks and stage 1 larvae. I had an infestation that I didn't think was gypsy moths because all the pictures I found on-line were of the stage 2 larvae. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.98.147.130 (talk) 16:00, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I think I found some egg sacks. The images are CC3.0 mushroomobserver.org/obs/88547

Emphasis way too high on North America and population control

Takes up the bulk of the article. Also, there are subsections that go into excessive "how-to" information. Perhaps a separate article titled "Gypsy Moth in North America" could be created, with less emphasis on how-to information related to eradication?

70.105.198.127 (talk) 22:28, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I've been wondering about this too. There is a lot of information about gypsy moth that doesn't relate to North America but I find it hard to work out how to incorporate it into this article. I've been meaning to ask for thoughts from people on how to tackle this.

There are a number of suggestions I have for this article. I think this page should give a better indication of the native range of gypsy moth. It should cover information on the transport of gypsy moth eggs around the world - the article doesn't mention the regular arrivals of gypsy moth on the west coast of the US (from Asia rather than from eastern USA), or make it clear that gypsy moth is in Canada and has been in NZ but was eradicated. Dispersal is not covered logically - dispersal of eggs by people is covered under the section on larvae for example. Lifespan and seasonality aren't particularly clear.

The flight information is basically wrong as well since it implies females mostly don't fly in Russia. Gypsy moth females definitely fly in Russia although there may be some areas west of the Urals where they don't fly as much.

I'm happy to revise this article or at least some sections. Because what I suggest is a really major revision, I'm happy to make a start at doing this in my sandbox. I'll post a link to it when I have made a start. Solanum dulcamara (talk) 11:31, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Images

There are many great images that should also be copied from the source material - RobLa 06:14 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)

See these great images of Gypsy moth from Sweden Selostaja 22:40, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

A Gypsy Moth Disambig page?

Do we need a Gypsy moth disambiguation page? Did not know there were that many references to the Gypsy moth. ProfessorPaul 04:31, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7

Given that this article has been "selected", what do we want to do to brush it up a bit?—GRM (talk) 20:45, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Northeast US Infestation in the early 1980's

When I was a child growing up on New York's Long Island we had a Gypsy Moth infestation that went on for 4 or 5 years. At first they seemed like a nuisance, with masses of caterpillars clinging under tree branches and crawling on everything each spring. Eventually we had 3 whole weeks in mid-spring where caterpillars were so numerous that they covered every inch of ground throughout the entire county. You could not walk 10 feet without having the small green early stage caterpillars landing in your hair. I have memories of thousands and thousand of last stage caterpillars covering the porch, road, house and driveway. For years after, everyone in my neighborhood destroyed every egg sack we came across. After that spring the county sprayed for several years wiping them out. They are still around but in much smaller numbers. I wish I knew the exact years, best guess would be 1980-1984. The County was Suffolk. One intersting thing that I remember was that every few days we would find an unusually large last stage caterpiller that was 4 to 5 times as large as the others. These were around 3-4 inches long and much thicker than the others. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.239.19.215 (talk) 00:02, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

A new article from Gizmodo came out recently relative to the above comment and I thought it might be worth bringing to everyone's attention. Would it be worth adding to this page the damage these insects are currently doing in the North East United States? "Hordes of gypsy moth caterpillars are currently ravaging parts of the Northeastern United States. Newly released images from space show the alarming damage being done to New England forests by these leaf-munching insects.." Let me know what you guys think. Cheers Comatmebro User talk:Comatmebro 22:53, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

band

butterflys taste with there feet —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.167.203.41 (talk) 17:18, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Size of adult moth?

Can anyone list the size of the adult gypsy moth? Thanks. 66.167.140.153 (talk) 00:19, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

 Done—GRM (talk) 21:18, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Life cycle timings

The article gives quite specific timings for the various stages, but are they applicable world-wide?—GRM (talk) 21:27, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Massive overhaul

I'm intending to take this to GA or FA. I've begun making changes and I am going to overhaul the article. The article currently does not make clear the differences between asiatica and dispar subspecies. I hope to change everything over, because the two species are vastly different. Move completed (to scientific name), I'm not moving to subspecies. Noted difference between, made asiatica page. Major rewriting and sourcing in progress. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 19:29, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Common name

Just dropping a note that I scaled back some recent changes on the common name. As mentioned elsewhere, we're at a point that the species name is generally the most reliable, but gypsy moth is still a common name while spongy moth is an additional new common name, at least in wiki-terms. Over at ESA, they removed it from their common name list and only added spongy. If that gains traction in sources or the real-world, then we can weight common names here, but until then, we'd be violating WP:CRYSTAL.

We're supposed to be a bit "behind the ball" here when it comes to relatively new changes, and changing an established common name is one of those things that we'd need to see traction over time on just getting rid of the gypsy moth term in article. Is this just something that ESA does and no one else really follows? Possible. Spongy moth could become the predominant common name too. Time will tell on that, so we don't need to be so quick to just change everything over. When in doubt, just use the species name like we do for other articles without a clear common name. KoA (talk) 21:31, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

Gypsy Moth is, and remains, the standard English name where the species is native. I'm not aware of any disquiet or requests for name changes being mentioned by Romany groups in this area (c.f. also Romani people para 2, "the term [Gypsy] is actually preferred by most English and Welsh Romanies, and is used to refer to them in official documentation"). Name changes in areas where the species does not occur naturally are of lower importance: see also the second section of this talk page #Emphasis way too high on North America and population control, which, even nearly 16 years on, remains largely unaddressed. - MPF (talk) 17:22, 10 March 2024 (UTC)