[Syrphidae] Unifiying revisionary taxonomy of Syrphidae?

[irina brake]

Dear syrphid workers,

the European Commission has funded EDIT, the European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy (http://www.mnhn.fr/museum/foffice/science/science/Recherche/rub-recherche/som-recherche/fiche-rech.xsp?ARTICLE_ARTICLE_ID=8599&idx=3&nav=liste ), a network of Excellence, with the aim of better integrating taxonomy across Europe. 

I will be a member of the workpackage "Unifying revisionary taxonomy", the aim of which is to encourage expert taxonomic task groups to migrate taxonomic data to an internet platform (for an explanation of unitary taxonomies see http://www.cate-project.org/unitary_taxonomies.html ).

One of the target taxa is Lepidoptera, but I since I am a dipterist (working on acalyptrate flies) I am pushing for the addition of Diptera.
Chris Thompson told me that Syrphidae are the ideal target taxon, because there are so many people actively working with Syrphidae and because there is already a lot of information available in digital format.

So my question to you is: Would you like to participate in EDIT? Would you like to work together on an online revision of Syrphidae?

We will need many experts who will populate the webpages with taxonomic, nomenclatural, biological, etc. information. We need people, who review the information. We need "amateurs", who will tell the specialists, what they would like to see online and how the taxonomic information can be put into an "understandable" format.

If you would like to participate in this project, please answer to this mailing list or to me directly at ibrake at sel.barc.usda.gov 

Best wishes, 
Irina Brake



Dr. Irina Brake
BioSystematic Database of World Diptera (BDWD)
Department of Entomology
Smithsonian Institution
MRC-0169 NHB
PO Box 37012
Washington, DC 20013-7012
(202) 633-1004 voice
(202) 786-9422 FAX
ibrake at sel.barc.usda.gov email
www.diptera.org web site

Milichiidae online:
http://www.sel.barc.usda.gov/Diptera/milichid/mi-home.html
Carnidae online:
http://www.sel.barc.usda.gov/Diptera/carnid/ca-home.html