Today I received a very exciting parcel of peruvian tachinids from John Smit and Menno Reemer. The samples were taken during the last half of 2009 in the Sachavacayoc Centre, Tambopata river region. This is a very species-rich part of the world with a very interesting fauna to me. I will probably take another few weeks to mount the specimens before accessioning them and trying to identify some.
It goes without saying that I am very grateful to John & Menno for their hard work! 
EDIT (17/2/2010): So far I have seen lots of anonymous, black things but I have also seen:
- Beskia aelops (a fairly ubiquitous phasiine tachinid found right across the neotropics and into the southern states of North America)
- a few black Cordyligaster sp. (wasp-mimic tachinids with long bodies and very narrow waists)
- 2x Belvosia sp. (one of my favourite goniine tachinids – black with bright, white dusting on the apical tergites)
- lots of small Cholomyia sp. (a long-legged dexiine with a superficial similarity to Rhagio spp. in their body shape and coloration)
- a few even smaller Borgmeiermyia sp. (one of the small multifissicorn tachinids)
- and a very large Zelia sp. (a large, long dexiine with wide beige squares on the tergites)
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I like to split the processing of Malaise trap samples into several distinct phases. The first phase is to empty the tubes of insects suspended in alcohol into individual tupperware trays and then work through them, splitting out the groups that I am interested in (mainly tachinids) and that I collect for friends.
The tachinids are then dried out slightly on filter-papers and then micropinned into flat, plastic boxes (as on the right of the photo). During this process I hook-out the male genitalia so that they can be viewed easily later. The other sorted samples that will be sent to other entomologists are stored in alcohol-tight tubes – one tube per date/collector/family.
Once the tachinids have dried out fully the next phase is to move the flies onto foam stages, give them a data label and pin them into working drawers. These drawers are work spaces where I can start looking for taxa that I have already described and pull out new taxa.
In this batch I have 273 tachinids plus about another 50 Hymenoptera and other Diptera families. I haven’t seen anything stunning this time but there are a lot of interesting taxa … lots of Borgmeiermyia cf. brasiliana etc. 
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This is a male of the second taxon to exhibit the highly modified antenna-3, shaped like a feather. All specimens of this taxon are between 4-5mm long and so the photographs are of quite low resolution. However, you should be able to see: the distinctive black body with golden dusting pattern; completely orange legs; slightly shaded wing costa; and the deep facial concavity sporting a highly modified antenna-3 – in this specimen it is slightly curly due to removal from alcohol:
The next (terrible!) photos attempt to illustrate the only female in my sample – males are much commoner (24:1). As you can see, the female has the same colouration, dusting pattern and wing venation but it doesn’t have the feathered antenna-3:
I conclude from this that the antennal feature is a sex-specific adaptation possibly to enable males to find females.
I determined this taxon to be Borgmeiermyia brasiliana (Townsend), using Arnaud (1963) & Sehnal (1998). I first got wind of this genus when Googling for tachinid photos online and discovered a photo on a nadsdiptera page.
- Arnaud, P. (1963) A revision of the genus Borgmeiermyia Townsend (Diptera, Tachinidae)
- Sehnal, P. (1998) A new species of Borgmeiermyia Townsend, 1935, from Paraguay (Insecta, Diptera, Tachinidae)
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