Lepidopterist

A lepidopterist or aurelian is a person who specialises in the study of Lepidoptera,^[1] members of an order encompassing moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies, skipper butterflies, and moth-butterflies. The term also includes hobbyists who are not formal scholars, who catch, collect, study, or simply observe lepidopterans.^[2] The field is formally known as Lepidopterology.

Fictional lepidopterists

• Hverven, in the film The Happy House (2013)
• Stapleton, in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles.
• The father, Ben, in the TV series Butterflies
• The character Red Jack, who claimed to be both Jack the Ripper and God, in the comic book Doom Patrol
• The character Judge Holden in Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian.
• Stein in the novel Lord Jim
• Ada in Vladimir Nabokov's Ada has dreams as a young girl of being a lepidopterist on the fictional planet 'anti-terra'. (Nabokov himself was an accomplished lepidopterist.)^[3]
• The character Frederick Clegg in the novel The Collector (1962) by John Fowles, also made into a film (1965) directed by William Wyler.
• Mr. Doe and Mr. Cardholder of the Venture Bros. who contact Jonas Venture Jr. at Spider Skull Island, to deal with The Monarch, a character with a butterfly theme.
• Jame Gumb, the main antagonist in the novel and film The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris.
• M in On Her Majesty's Secret Service
• Blue's late mother in Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl.
• T.C. Romulus in the film Bio-Dome.
• Charles Darwin in Tarsem Singh's The Fall.

See also

• Insect collecting
• Butterfly watching
• Coleopterist
• Timeline of entomology – prior to 1800

References

1. "lepidopterist". (n.d.). In Dictionary Definitions. Retrieved November 30, 2010, from http://www.yourdictionary.com/lepidopterist.
2. "Home page of "lepidopterist.org"". Retrieved 30 November 2010.
3. "Excerpts from A Guide to Nabokov's Butterflies and Moths". Pennsylvania State University Library. Retrieved 17 March 2011.