Visual Key to the Butterflies of Idaho
Last Updated 11 August 2000

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Yes, my butterfly looks like this

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As of 11 August, 2000, the visual key is complete.  Please report any errors that you might find.

Welcome to the Key of Idaho's Butterflies.   This is a visual key that will show you images and highlight characteristics to help you identify a butterfly.  Every page in this key has a yes/no question about particular characteristics of each family, subfamily, and species of butterfly.  Read the question carefully and examine your butterfly thoroughly.  To make using this visual key easier, we highlighted the characters with which the question is dealing by using red or yellow outlined circles and/or arrows.  To navigate use the button bar found at the top of the page.

Since this is a visual key, we could only create a key of the species for which we have pictures.  That means that there are 20 of the 168 species in Idaho that are not included in this key.  A majority of these are found in the Hesperiidae or Skipper family.  Click here for the list of 20 species not included in the key.  As images become available, we will include the species into the key so that, eventually, you should be able to key out all of the species found in Idaho.