Welcome to my website!

Breedingbutterflies.com is a passion project that aims to document the life cycles of moths – by rearing them in captivity and documenting the various life stages. It is currently the most popular website about (breeding) moths on the internet with up to 20.000 monthly visitors!

We live in a world where the diversity and abundance of insects is rapidly declining. And this is a major problem. Insects are the most important animals in any terrestrial ecosystem – acting as vital sources of food for many insectivores from songbirds, to bats, to rodents, to amphibians and reptiles. Insects pollinate the majority of flowering plants, that strictly rely on them. Insects propagate and manage the flora and fauna around them! They are one of the most essential links in the food chain. A world with less insects is a world with less biodiversity. And a world with less biodiversity is a world in which our species (humans) struggles to survive – even though we are rarely willing to accept this fact – our species, too, relies on the environment to survive.

We could name many superficial threats that endanger insects. Overuse of pesticide, deforestation, urban development, droughts, climate change, light pollution, mono cultures, eutrophication, agriculture.. but all these threats can be summarized into one: ignorance.

Ignorance is an existential threat to insects. And when we fail to realize how important they are to the environment, we will inevitably fail to thrive as a species.

I believe in free and accessible information about insects. I believe that getting people interested in their ecology, life cycles, and even keeping them as pets, helps to correct our malicious attitude – and helps people become invested in their conservation. And ultimately, invested in the truth – the truth that we depend on insects more than insects depend on us! Furthermore, information about insect species should be free and accessible. Amateur entomologists often struggle to learn critical information since much important information is hidden behind paywalls or inner circles; they are left out! This website aims to distribute information for free to anyone with an internet connection in hopes of getting more people involved and interested.

This website aims to combat ignorance and tries to instigate sense of wonder when it comes to the beautiful biodiversity of our world. This in turn, could help to change the cultural zeitgeist of environmental ignorance.

This website is created by Bart Coppens (me, the author!). Unless stated otherwise, all the pictures and text on this website are produced by be, myself. I am an (amateur) entomologist from the Netherlands with a specialization in breeding moths in captivity and documenting their life histories. Over the span of many years, I have obtained, and raised hundreds of moth species in captivity – and documented their growth from eggs to fully fledged moths (and butterflies).

Among my skills are competences are researching butterflies and moths in South-Eastern Brazil, where I am sponsored by a natural reserve named Reserva Ecológica de Guapiaçu  (REGUA), working in natural history museums as the (honorary) conservator and identifying unlabeled specimens. It is rare for me to publish scientific research but it does happen from time to time; and I am working on a selection of scientific articles that will improve our understanding of, and help the conservation of certain species. I have also worked on several butterfly farms in Asia (Laos, Cambodia) . On top of that, I am the owner of one of the biggest YouTube channels about butterflies and moths. Here in an impression of my work and content:

This website is also crowdfunded; the donations and funds I receive from my fans and viewers help me maintain this website. Of course, contributions are never mandatory (optional!) and every visitor is appreciated. For more information click here. The donations I receive compensate for the subscription fees (I need to pay for digital storage since the website contains many pictures), and of course, my free time, and breeding/photography equipment.

On top of that you may encounter ads on this website; advertisements are a secondary source of revenue for this website. But as you can imagine, moths are not a very commercial subject and don’t attract a lot of advertisers, nor huge amounts of traffic most of the time [the ads generate about 30 cents per day]. Therefore, this website still primarily relies on donations, to compensate for the vast amounts of time and resources required to maintain it – at the time of writing (2022) this website contains over 250 pages of information written by me! And I’m just getting started – more species are added every year!

And now a little disclaimer. At the time of writing (2022), I’m approaching 30 years in age. But I’ve owned this website since I was, what I consider to be, very young and inexperienced.

As I grew older and more experienced, the quality of my writing and the quality of my pictures have greatly improved. As a side effect, some of the oldest pages on this website are admittedly of low quality. I am not a native English speaker for example – and I used to write more sloppy articles with sloppy pictures. I am currently in the process of rewriting and revamping some of the oldest articles. But as you can imagine, this takes a lot of time. Why? Because I have to breed the same species all over again to obtain better pictures and information to improve old articles.

So while it could be a disappointing user experience to stumble upon half-finished pages and old (invalid) broken links please know that I am working behind the scenes to improve things constantly. It’s also a good reason to keep visiting; each time you visit something new may have been added – or something that is old and of lower quality may have been rewritten and improved!

That being said, this website has been cited in numerous scientific publications and below each faunistic article I provide a citation reference for those who would like to cite my website in their paper.

This website maintains a balance between formal and informal. I believe that a slight touch of humor is important sometimes, and gets people more interested in reading. But below the surface layer, there is a lot of faunistic value when it comes to publishing the rarely documented and rarely photographed life histories of many moths; and I aim to be scientifically informed to the best of my ability.

If you’re ready to learn about moths, here some recommended pages!

• Learn about the Luna Moth (Recommended page)
• Learn about the African Moon Moth (Recommended page)
• Learn about the Mock Swallowtail Moth (Recommended page)

Good luck with your journey to learn more about insects! And thank you for visiting.

• Not done browsing yet? Then click here to return to the homepage (HOMEPAGE)
• Looking for a specific species? Then click here to see the full species list (FULL SPECIES LIST) 
• Looking for general (breeding)guides and information? Then click here to see the general information (GENERAL INFORMATION)
• Interested in a certain family? Then click here to see all featured Lepidoptera families (FAMILIES)

Citations: Coppens, B. (2019); Written by Bart Coppens; based on a real life breeding experience [for citations in literature and publications] 

Was this information helpful to you? Then please consider contributing here (more information) to keep this information free and support the future of this website. This website is completely free to use, and crowdfunded. Contributions can be made via paypal, patreon, and several other ways.

All the funds I raise online will be invested in the website; in the form of new caresheets, but also rewriting and updating the old caresheets (some are scheduled to be rewritten), my educational websites, Youtube, breeding projects, the study of moths andconservation programs.

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