2009 accessioning finished!
After 3 days of frantic reorganization in the Palearctic collection I have finally accessioned most of the tachinids I caught or was given last year – approximately 400-500 specimens! 😀
This included batches from:
- southern Bavaria (donated a long time ago by Dr Donald Quicke from a sample collected by Dr M. Kuhlmann)
- Galicia in Spain (donated by Jose José Luis Camaño Portela as part of his species-recording project)
- southern Portugal (donated by Jorge Almeida)
- Provence (donated by Helene Dumas from her garden)
- French Pyrennes (collected by myself many years ago)
- Estonia (donated by Villu Soon)
- and a variety of single specimens given to me as part of my work in the Tachinid Recording Scheme.
All are very welcome and very much appreciated as they fill in important gaps in my collection and improve my knowledge of this group.
I have also sorted out a parcel to send to Peter Tschorsnig, containing a lot of the flies that have been causing me problems. These are specimens that either key with little confidence and that have no secondary / confirmatory characters to back up my determinations or species that belong to complex and difficult genera where a truly expert eye is required. I have also included several specimens of things that are possibly new to their region – e.g. a “Eumea mitis” caught by Ivan Perry in the UK, and a “Ceromya dorsigera” that could be a second record for Spain. I am very grateful for Peter’s help and I hope to have these specimens back in the coming months – and in the meantime I will keep my fingers crossed that I was close-enough with my determinations! 😉
