Lepidoptera includes over 160,000 species of butterflies and moths worldwide. They have enormous ecological and economic impact as pests, pollinators, and food sources for other organisms. We are using Assembling the Tree of Life (AToL) NSF funding t 1. generate a backbone phylogeny of the entire order, 2. date major subclade divergence by re-evaluating fossils (fossil project), 3. create a rich taxonomic resource (taxon template) and 4. create a glossary of morphological terms and associated images to synergize tree-building using morphological characters - all within a worldwide online venue. Our project goal is to galvanize the broader lepidopterist community towards constructing a comprehensive and fully resolved tree. Here we present the fossil project, taxon template and morphology projects.

• Soowon Cho(Core collaborator, Dept. of Plant Medicine, Chungbuk Nat'l Univ.)
• Leptree team members(Co-PIs, Core collaborators, Twig leaders, Collection manager, post-doctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students, and laboratory and informatics staffs from all around the world, headquartered at the Univ. of Maryland)