Palearctic reorganization

I decided not to avoid it any more and started organizing my Palearctic collection into glass-topped drawers and unit trays. This means bringing together my British material (3 store-boxes); my Russian specimens (1 store box), Finnish specimens (1 store box) and my existing European specimens (1 store box).

Having everything together in one place makes much more sense and will mean that my reference material will be more accessible and easy to use.

I have also decided that they will be ordered alphabetically – bypassing the nighmare of tachinid subfamilies & tribes. One of the commonest problems when looking for a species in a traditional tachinid collection is to know which drawer the specimen is in because the tribes are all very similar and very unmemorable. Alphabetic sequencing is unconventional and means that subfamilies are broken up across the whole collection, which isn’t ideal, but it is a sacrifice worth making.