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Gerard,

Your message brings up a couple of good points. You are right, there is no shortage of syrphid enthusiasts. Yet, what is important from the survey point of view is that identifications are done in a timely manner, names are returned, and specimens are returned in accordance with whatever terms were agreed to. In formal surveys, usually all holotypes and half of the material need to be returned. The rest can be retained by the taxonomist as a necessary basis for future identifications - i.e., for their voucher collection. The problem is that in most surveys there are more specimens than a single researcher can reasonably handle, at least for large families. Identifications get delayed, and much of the material dries up on the expert's desk.

The best solution, in my opinion, is to have teams working on the material. As an example, for our Thailand survey, there are at least three empid specialists working on the material, actively publishing papers on what they find. In comparison, the phorids are bogged down because there is only one person (me) to study them.

It would be great for Neotropical Diptera taxonomy if groups of people interested in the fauna organized themselves into, for example, an asilid team, a tachinid team, a syrphid team, etc., willing to work up their groups.

Another big problem is sorting and preparing the material. In most surveys, the flies are sorted to family in alcohol, and distributed that way to experts. The experts must then mount, label, etc. the specimens, which is a drain on their time and energy. Some surveys propose to mount all the material before it goes to the experts, but these are the minority. Again, a team approach to working on the material would reduce this preparation burden.

Brian