Monty Wood’s neotropical workshop

This weekend has been a real treat for me and I have learned so much. All due to the visit of Monty Wood, who took some time off working at the BMNH to visit me and work on my neotropical material. Monty has been identifying huge numbers of specimens and passing on as much of his knowledge as he can in such a short time … while I struggle a bit to keep up and remember all the new names! 🙂

Over the coming weeks I plan to update most of my previous neotropical posts to reflect this work – confirming a lot of good IDs, correcting a few bad IDs (or just outdated synonyms) and to publish many new photos of material that Monty has been able to identify.

As a taster here is a quick photo of a taxon that Monty has been unable to place in a tribe, due to its very unusual morphology. He thinks that it *might* be in the tribe Pererigonini but this is very tentative and will require a lot of work to confirm. The specimen was taken by Martin Hauser in Bolivia and has been given to Monty Wood, who is best placed to work on it.

Needless to say, I am completely indebted to Monty for the generosity he has shown in giving up so much of his time to pass on his knowledge. I hope that we will be able to collaborate much more in the future. Also, many thanks for Adrian, Barbara & John for hosting Monty during his visit 🙂

EDIT (21/11/2010): On closer examination Monty found that it is a Neobrachelia in disguise – it has all the same structures as other Neobrachelia but it isn’t drab and boring like the rest of them 🙂