Mineral, beetle, butterfly and seashell websites/forums

[zzffnn]

Please kindly recommend us some TOP English websites/forums for minerals (mostly macro native clusters), jewel beetles, butterflies and seashells.

We would like to see nice photos on those web sites, along with identifications and knowledgeable forum members. By TOP, I meant websites nearly as good as this one (I prefer to join only one forum for each subject).

I know Mindat is there for minerals.

My 7 year old son and I got into those subjects this summer, mostly focusing on bright/contrasty colors, interesting patterns/structures and chemistry/biology.

We have some knowledge on those subjects - have 6 related books already and have spent about $800 for mineral and seashell specimens (for $5-$25 per specimen). We barely started with beetles and butterflies and mostly collected specimens by our own.

Please feel free to free to recommend good books too, as long as they are not too expensive (less than $30 used I would say, though not a hard limit).

[MarkSturtevant]

I know mostly about sites for insects. Some possibilities.
1. For specific sites on those subjects, I suggest looking on Flickr, using specific search terms. I just looked and saw several. Not a lot of 'discussion', maybe, but lots of pictures.
2. This web site: http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/s-102-1.html is for macrophotography. Its mostly insects and spiders, but the people there are very knowledgeable and they will quickly answer questions. It is my favorite site.
3. This website: https://beetlesinthebush.wordpress.com is run by a professional entomologist who specializes in tiger beetles and metallic woodborers (these are jewel beetles). An excellent photographer, he documents his adventures in that site.
4. Of course there is Bugguide: http://bugguide.net/node/view/15740 which is an astonishingly deep repository of pictures and some information about every arthropod in the U.S. It can be daunting, but from the home page you can type in search terms and generally get a lot of thumbnail pictures. From a picture you can navigate to information about taxonomy, and other information.
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Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

[Pau]

Maybe not the most adapted for children but www.mindat.org is on top of my list
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Pau

[zzffnn]

Thank you very much, gents.
Intense science should not be a problem, as I will be reading with my son and am a pretty decent scientist/teacher/translator.

[Grahame]

How about
https://www.inaturalist.org/
A nice source to post flora fauna observations and get id from specialists for your pics.
You can create "projects"
No reason you could not create one for you and your son.
Search from the projects tab there may be something set up for your area.
It's a useful part of the web