News
2024
01.01.2024:
I wish all visitors of arthropodafotos.de a healthy, happy and successful year 2024.
2023
21.12.2023:
Today the website arthropodafotos.de celebrates its 11th birthday.
At arthropodafotos.de there are currently 11214 pictures of 2405 arthropod species, 875 photos of other animals (mammals: 22, birds: 98, reptiles: 16, amphibians: 4, mollusks: 21) and 2717 pictures of 664 plant species.
In the course of the year new species profiles were added in the German version.
01.01.2023:
I wish all visitors of arthropodafotos.de a healthy, happy and successful year 2023.
2022
21.12.2022:
Today the website arthropodafotos.de celebrates its 10th birthday.
At arthropodafotos.de there are currently 10778 pictures of 2329 arthropod species, 845 photos of other animals (mammals: 21, birds: 98, reptiles: 16, amphibians: 4, mollusks: 21) and 2716 pictures of 664 plant species.
In the course of the year new species profiles were added in the German version.
09.12.2022:
In the beetles (Curculionidae), some species profiles were added in the German version.
15.09.2022:
In the beetles (Cerambycidae), some species profiles were added in the German version.
15.03.2022:
In the beetles (Anthicidae to Cantharidae), species profiles were added and names updated in the German version.
08.02.2022:
Some new species profiles have been created for the ground and tiger beetles (Carabidae) in the German version.
04.01.2022:
For the Mantodea (Mantids) 3 new species profiles have been created and the family assignment has been updated.
01.01.2022:
I wish all visitors of arthropodafotos.de a healthy, happy and successful year 2022.
2021
21.12.2021:
Today the website arthropodafotos.de celebrates its 9th birthday.
At arthropodafotos.de there are currently 10359 pictures of 2264 arthropod species, 831 photos of other animals (mammals: 21, birds: 96, reptiles: 16, amphibians: 3, mollusks: 21) and 2716 pictures of 664 plant species.
In the course of the year new species profiles were added in the German version.
24.11.2021:
The Rhiniinae have been separated from the Calliphoridae family as a distinct family Rhiniidae.
12.06.2021:
Since today there are more than 10000 pictures of arthropods.
09.04.2021:
Some new species profiles have been created for the skin beetles (Dermestidae) in the german version.
14.03.2021:
Some new species profiles were created for the spiders in the german version.
03.03.2021:
Unfortunately, there are some programmes that throw out the full stop at the end of the address of web pages where a determination down to the species level was not possible. With a redirect, the problem should now be solved for the pages ending with "sp.".
31.01.2021:
After some adjustments in the programme code, the website now runs under php 8.0.
01.01.2021:
I wish all visitors of arthropodafotos.de a healthy, happy and successful year 2021.
2020
21.12.2020:
Today the website arthropodafotos.de celebrates its 8th birthday. At arthropodafotos.de there are currently 9845 pictures of 2211 arthropod species, 787 photos of other animals (mammals: 19, birds: 93, reptiles: 16, amphibians: 3, mollusks: 21) and 2703 pictures of 663 plant species.
In the course of the year new species profiles were added in the German version.
31.03.2020:
I have made small changes to the layout of the thumbnails.
06.03.2020:
Species profiles of scoliid wasps (Scoliidae) and tiphiid wasps (Tiphiidae) were added in the german version.
28.02.2020:
The species profiles of spider wasps (Pompilidae), digger wasps (Crabronidae) and thread-waisted wasps (Sphecidae) were completed in the german version.
15.01.2020:
As of today there is a new section entitled Miscellaneous, unidentified arthropods.
01.01.2020:
I wish all visitors of arthropodafotos.de a healthy, happy and successful year 2020.
2019
21.12.2019:
Today the website arthropodafotos.de celebrates its 7th birthday. At arthropodafotos.de there are currently 9100 pictures of 2143 arthropod species and 765 photos of other animals (mammals: 18, birds: 92, reptiles: 16, amphibians: 3, mollusks: 21) and 2678 pictures of 659 plant species.
In the course of the year new species profiles have been added in different orders. Also the classification of the Dictyoptera was changed. The former order Dictyoptera was shifted to superorder level. Now Dictyoptera include the orders Mantodea (mantids) and Blattodea (cockroaches and termites).
10.02.2019:
Species profiles of deer and horse flies (Tabanidae) were added.
01.01.2019:
I wish all visitors of arthropodafotos.de a healthy, happy and successful year 2019.
2018
26.12.2018:
The species profiles of leaf beetles (Chrysomelidae) were completed.
21.12.2018:
Today the website arthropodafotos.de celebrates its 6th birthday. At arthropodafotos.de there are currently 8569 pictures of 2079 arthropod species and 735 photos of other animals (mammals: 18, birds: 90, reptiles: 16, amphibians: 3, mollusks: 22) and 2649 pictures of 653 plant species.
06.10.2018:
The species profiles of ladybirds (Coccinellidae) were completed.
22.06.2018:
The Ensifera and Noctuoidea family classification has been updated. The tuft moths (Nolidae) were separated from the Noctuidae as an independent family.
04.04.2018:
The species profiles of hoverflies were completed.
17.01.2018:
In the hoverflies, nearly half of the pages was revised and supplemented with short species profiles.
01.01.2018:
I wish all visitors of arthropodafotos.de a healthy, happy and successful year 2018.
2017
21.12.2017:
Today the website arthropodafotos.de celebrates its 5th birthday. At arthropodafotos.de there are currently 8152 pictures of 2025 arthropod species and 660 photos of other animals (mammals: 18, birds: 87, reptiles: 16, amphibians: 3, mollusks: 21) and 2635 pictures of 650 plant species.
08.10.2017:
In recent months, several new pages have been added with short descriptions of species and information on biology, habitat, and distribution in the German version.
13.09.2017:
The seed beetles were shifted as subfamily to the leaf beetles (Chrysomelidae).
29.07.2017:
This week, the number of presented species of arthropods has been reached 2000.
05.07.2017:
The family classification of the bugs of the superfamily Lygaeoidea was updated. Several species that had been classified before in the family Lygaeidae are now in the families Cymidae, Geocoridae, Oxycarenidae and Rhyparochromidae. The species pages of brush-footed butterflies (Nymphalidae) have been supplemented with synonyms.
06.05.2017:
The species pages of owlet moths (Noctuidae) have been supplemented with synonyms.
07.04.2017:
The offer of a free SSL certificate from my provider has led me to apply https. Since yesterday arthropodafotos.de is accessible at the address https://arthropodafotos.de/ (previously: http://www.arthropodafotos.de/).
03.03.2017:
In the case of bees, the division into families was changed. Some species formerly belonging to the large family Apidae are now in the families Andrenidae, Colletidae, Halictidae, Megachilidae and Melittidae.
13.02.2017:
On the species pages of the vertebrate animals the scientific classification was added.
29.01.2017:
Also in January, a few pictures, mostly of birds, have been added. The species pages of vertebrates, ichneumonid and braconid wasps have been supplemented with synonyms.
01.01.2017:
I wish all visitors of arthropodafotos.de a healthy, happy and successful year 2017.
2016
22.12.2016:
Yesterday the website arthropodafotos.de celebrated its 4th birthday. Currently, there are 7575 pictures of 1959 arthropod species and 585 photos of other animals (mammals: 16, Birds: 84, reptiles: 15, amphibians: 3, molluscs: 20) as well as 2448 images from 614 plant species.
22.11.2016:
The former families Phaneropteridae and Meconematidae (Oak Bush-crickets) in Long-horned Orthoptera were inserted into the Tettigoniidae as subfamilies. Further species pages were supplemented with synonyms.
16.11.2016:
The species pages of midges, spiders and ground beetles were supplemented with synonyms.
11.11.2016:
The species pages of the flies were supplemented with synonyms.
22.10.2016:
A new page titled "Interesting Facts about Arthropods" was added to the topics.
Currently, there are 7547 pictures of 1947 arthropod species, 585 photos of other animals as well as 2444 images of 613 plant species.
12.07.2016:
The sort order of German plant names in the left column was changed due to adapting to botanical spelling. Unfortunately, I did not find a simple way to display the plants without German names at the end.
07.06.2016:
The number of plant species has risen to 600.
15.04.2016:
In the last week I changed the source code of webpages. Now all pages run with the more performant PHP 7.
07.04.2016:
Now all webpages are converted to UTF-8 and HTML5.
04.04.2016:
Today I started to change the character encoding of the website from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8 and the HTML version from HTML 4.01 strict to HTML5. Ideally, that should not be visible for the user, but due to the large number of pages errors cannot be excluded.
03.04.2016:
When clicking on a year the news on this webpage can now be displayed or hidden as needed.
23.03.2016:
Since the load time of the overview page with images of plants has become too long with the increase in the number of plants, it was divided into two pages (herbaceous and woody plants).
19.03.2016:
The species pages of arthropods have been updated by adding scientific classification.
04.02.2016:
Since many plants can be found at different scientific names on the Internet, I was looking for a solution to their designation on this site. I have decided to follow the information provided in the Catalogue of Life, and to supplement the pages with synonyms. Therefore, a few pages can now be found under different names. In order not to compromise the user experience by displaying the synonyms I conducted a small change in the species pages. If there are more than 20 synonyms for a species, they are not visible by default, and can be displayed as needed and be hidden again by clicking on synonyms:∇. The current champion with most synonyms is the Harebell Campanula rotundifolia.
23.01.2016:
In the meantime, some plants of Fuerteventura have been added. Now there are pictures from a total of 540 species.
01.01.2016:
I wish all visitors of arthropodafotos.de a healthy and successful year 2016 with 366 happy days.
2015
21.12.2015:
Arthropodafotos.de celebrates its 3rd birthday. Currently, there are 7252 pictures of 1905 arthropod species and 539 photos of other animals (mammals: 11, Birds: 83, reptiles: 15, amphibians: 3, molluscs: 18) as well as 1890 images from 469 plant species.
28.08.2015:
After a change of style sheets, arthropodafotos.de can be shrunk to mobile display widths. Now a few pages must be adapted to the reduced dimensions.
24.06.2015:
Today I again tested the Google image search, as there were no more error messages since yesterday. The bug has been fixed. Now the links are complete and the forwarding to the website works.
08.06.2015:
Recently, I have found that in the Google image search (where the website is displayed in a frame) in many cases the direct links to my site are not working because the parameters required for the output of pages are not sent to the browser. I do not know how long the problem already exists, and can only hope that this has not frighten too many visitors away. So far, I could not determine the cause of this error. The only solution I see is to rewrite all the dynamic URIs into static. Unfortunately, this can not be done overnight. The error affects only the image search. Navigation within the site works without problems.
24.05.2015:
In the meantime, especially some plants of the Canary Islands have been added. Therefore, the classification was changed in herbaceous plants and woody plants (previously trees and shrubs).
19.03.2015:
I started with the revision of the source code of the website to make the setup more modular. The navigation has not changed. Only a few small changes in the layout are visible to the user. In the header is now the Flavicon of the website and for the names in the left column of the gallery pages there is a uniform color code. If necessary, please press refresh in the browser, so the pages can be reloaded.
The topic page "The Small Tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae) - Pupation and Hatching" is now available in an English version.
06.02.2015:
The web pages have received a footer. Furthermore, the website was supplemented this year by some images of plants (37 new species) and the missing English translation of the topic page "An Occupant of a Plant Gall of Cynips divisa".
01.01.2015:
I wish all visitors of arthropodafotos.de a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year 2015.
2014
22.12.2014:
After the second year of existence of arthropodafotos.de there are 6903 pictures of 1859 species of arthropods and 467 photos of other animal species (mammals: 10, birds: 76, reptiles: 14, amphibians: 3, molluscs: 18). New are 3 topics pages and 1148 images of 300 plant species.
17.12.2014:
A new page titled "From Caterpillar to Parasitic Wasp - The Development of an Endoparasitoid and its Host in Pictures" was added to the topics.
03.12.2014:
As of today there is a new theme page about an occupant of a plant gall of Cynips divisa.
26.11.2014:
The number of plant species increased to 300.
23.09.2014:
The plant pages were rebuild. Now the thumbnails can be loaded on demand, and the plant families can be accessed directly.
12.09.2014:
I am reorganising the site navigation by adding an additional navigation bar to the top of each page. Please push the refresh button in your browser to reload the modified style sheets.
07.08.2014:
After the last update there are photos of more than 200 plant species.
20.06.2014:
A new rubric "topics" was established, containing at the moment a single page about pupation and hatching of the Small Tortoiseshell. Unfortunately, there is only a German text version with figure captions in English. Little by little the rubric should be complemented by further pages on specific topics.
10.05.2014:
In many cases it is important for the determination of insects to know the name of the plant, where they were found on. Therefore I started in this year photographing the plants on the wayside. First photos can be found on a small, still unstructured plant page. If pictures exist, you can switch between two different views. Further pictures are available after clicking on the names of the plants.
If you find some errors I would be glad about a short message with the correct determination of the plant species.
PS: The new page is independent on the others and therefore well-suited as CSS playground. Do not be surprised, if the layout differs from the other pages and changes from time to time.
05.04.2014:
I have made a small change in the page layout. Home is shifted to the left in the horizontal menu bar.
02.03.2014:
The bird page was reorganised to improve the clarity, and the birds were divided into orders. In the captions of big pictures families were added.
14.02.2014:
On the page with orders of arthropods a link to a new page about systematics was added to the menu bar.
05.01.2014:
After an update there are pictures of 17 mollusc and 9 mammal species.
01.01.2014:
I wish all visitors of arthropodafotos.de a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year 2014.
2013
30.12.2013:
After an update the number of bird species increased to 66.
21.12.2013:
In the first year of existence of arthropodafotos.de 667 photos of arthropods were newly added. Now there are 6587 photos of 1826 species of arthropods and 332 photos of other animal species (mammals: 6, birds: 50, reptiles: 13, amphibians: 3, molluscs: 11).
21.10.2013:
Update of the common English names of butterflies and moths.
16.10.2013:
Small changes regarding the moths: The tuft moths were included in the owlet moths (Noctuidae).
Now there are 6487 photos of more than 1800 species of arthropods.
11.09.2013:
Direct links to the species pages were added to the new pictures. The number of photos of arthropods increased to 6383.
07.08.2013:
Now there are 6258 photos of arthropods from 300 different families and 305 photos of other animals.
Many thanks to Christoph Benisch for the critical review of beetle photos from Germany.
30.06.2013:
The latest photo additions can be viewed on a new page.
16.06.2013:
In the meantime the number of images of arthropods increased to 6116.
12.05.2013:
Molluscs arrived. The Eurasian Jay was added to the birds. The number of photos of arthropods increased to 6011.
02.05.2013:
Now there are 6002 photos of arthropods and images of 44 bird species. Newly added are some photos from Fuerteventura and the Eurasian Blackcap as new bird species.
27.03.2013:
Update with 2 new bird species - White Wagtail and Wood Duck.
18.03.2013:
With the new advanced picture search you can directly access the species pages. Now there are 5937 pictures of arthropods. The number of bird species increased to 41.
28.02.2013:
In the meantime some German names of flies and hemipterans were added. The number of photos increased to 5927.
22.01.2013:
To simplify the navigation links to popular orders of arthropods were added to the homepage.
19.01.2013:
After some software improvements HTML popups are working. Thanks to Hilde from the Highslide support team.
13.01.2013:
After an update there are images of 38 bird and 12 reptile species.
2012
21.12.2012:
In order to manage the photo chaos on my computer I started in the end of 2008 to build up a database with images of arthropods. The main focus was to get a fast overview about the species photographed since 2003. Because of the limited human multitasking capacity, the continuous integration of new pictures, and the necessity to familiarise with programming and page design it took some time until the publication of this website.
The in the last years continuously grown database currently contains data sets belonging to 5920 photos of arthropods.
I hope that I have succeeded in my intension to create user-friendly site navigation.
If you find some errors I would be glad about a short message.
Have fun!