Dear colleagues,

I would like to inform you and to invite you to the 5th International Simuliidae Symposium which will take place between 3rd and 7th September 2012 in Bratislava (Department of Zoology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia). The 3rd September will be for registration and in the evening a welcome reception. Lectures will be on 4 and 6 September and on 7 September a.m. On 5 September a whole day field excursion is planned.

Within few weeks the registration form with more detailed information will be sent ou. All information and the registration form will be available also on the web page http://zoology.fns.uniba.sk/simulium2012/.

For this email I am using a slightly updated list of receipts based mostly on the email lists from the previous symposia, therefore probably following three weaknesses can be involved: a) some of you will receive it in multiple copies; b) this information is sent to receipts who are not working with simuliids; c) some of potentially interested participants will not receive this information. I apologize to all these groups and if you know somebody from the last one, please inform him about the symposium.

Best regards,

Matus

----------------------
Matus Kudela
Department of Zoology
Comenius University
Mlynska dolina
SK-842 15 Bratislava
Slovakia

I would like to inform you all that the Volume 27 of Dipteron-Wroclaw (online pdf version) is available! Please, see http://pte.au.poznan.pl/dipteron/biuletyn.html.

A Happy New Year 2012!

Best wishes,

Andrzej J. Woznica

(Dipteron-Wroclaw - Editor in Chief)

Dear Colleagues:

I gladly inform you that the 6th issue of the second volume of "UkrEntFau" is published today.

https://sites.google.com/site/ukrentfau/contents-1/contents-ukrentfau-2011

1. Klymenko, S.I. Key to entomophagous species associated with phytophagous gall wasps (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae) on herbs and shrubs in the south of Ukraine. [2(6): 1-12]

2. Simutnik, S.A. & Vasylieva, J.S. New records of encyrtid wasps of the genus Agekianella (Hymenoptera, Encyrtidae) in the faunas of Israel and Ukraine. [2(6): 13-14]

3. Gharajedaghi, Y., Khaghaninia, S., Mohamadzade Namin, S. Flies of the tribe Tephritini (Diptera: Tephritidae) from Ajabshir Region (East Azerbaijan Province), with new records for Iranian fauna. [2(6): 15-18]

We wish you all a Happy New Year!

Valery A. Korneyev aka Nosferatumyia

Dear friends and colleages,
The CCW now includes illustrations at the species level, at the moment for almost 900 species.
1) If you go to a species, you see which illustrations are availble (try Nephrotoma dorsalis, Nigrotipula nigra, Tipula kaibabensis)
2) It is also possible to make a selection, e.g. to ask for specific illustrations. In the general search page, try under subgenus Pterelachisus, Belgium, hypopygium (9 species in Belgium, all with figs.), try subgenus Lunatipula, Spain, ovipositor (44 species in Spain, not all with figs.), try subgenus Eremotipula, Canada, hypopygium (4 species, all with figs.).
3) A more detailed search for illustrations is possible in the advanced search, e.g., islands. Try genus Tipula, Canary Is, hypopygium (9 species, all with figs).

The ultimate goal is to have an overall database of the important illustrations as far as available for the cranefly species worldwide.
This of course is an enormous job which I can not achieve on my own.
For the coming period I shall concentrate on adult westpalaearctic Tipulidae, then the other westpalaearctic craneflies, then eastpalaearctic. Included already are the illustrations published by H. de Jong, myself, Vermoolen, Tangelder, Theischinger (excl. Australia), den Hollander, Theowald (excl. larvae & pupae), and Mannheims in Lindner.
Everyone is invited to join the project by sharing photo's or illustrations, or to join hands to cover a certain taxon, region, or set of illustrations (e.g. of immatures).

I hope to hear from you again.

All the best,

Pjotr Oosterbroek

Illustrated Catalogue of the Craneflies of the World (CCW). Updated 30 november 2011. Over 15.300 species incl. distributions, citations, illustrations, PDF's. Online at http://nlbif.eti.uva.nl/ccw/

Only today I read in a related forum that Wolfgang Schacht (retired from the Diptera Section of the Zoologische Staatssammlung München) dies 10 April this year. He was very active and, amongst others, responsible for cataloging the Diptera of Bavaria. A full list of publications can be found here. Another sad loss for dipterology.