Thread subject: Diptera.info :: Sending flies via mail

Posted by Adrian on 20-11-2007 13:40
#20

''Apparently it's a bad idea to send the flies dried and not pinned. A pity. That would have been the easiest way ... I though that if you have a hard box of some sort where you put the flies and wrapped each losely with soft paper (like toilet paper) that it wouldn't get damaged, but I guess you have sent enough flies to see what was successful and not ''

Please , whatever you do, use material lacking in fibres as they will tangle with setae etc. and damage the specimens. Problem is that non-fiber paper tends to be slippy and flies move around. In fibrous material they simply get smashed to bits.
I recently received several thousand Empidids from Chile, stored in boxes with soft paper and cotton wool. Such a tragedy to see what was once probably a very important collection, utterly destroyed:- maybe one in every 200 specimens retained enough characters to have some slight use but really, they all need to be thrown away
cheers
Adrian