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John,

That is what we need, people to take on a genus (like you did), revise it, and "maintain" it. By maintain, I mean the following: most of us revise a genus, work up all the material, describe the n. spp., publish, and then move on, basically allowing the genus to languish again until the next revision. I wish people (including me) would decide to maintain a genus or two in a permanent state of revision, describing any new species, identifying any new specimens, and keeping an up to date key (online, preferably). With 10 people maintaining two genera each, you could go to various sites and do meaningful inventories and comparisons with the 20 genera without getting bogged down with everything else. That is fundable science.

Gerard:

Chris Thompson is coming to visit me at the LACM in November. I'll talk to him about establishing a NT syrphid team.

I should point out that my interest in teams is for Neotropical inventory projects, like our proposed All Diptera Biodiversity Inventory at Zurqui in Costa Rica. We had a lot of trouble getting collaborators for some groups, largely because people are over-extended.

Syrphids are the easy ones. Where we really need good teams (and they might already exist, and I just don't know about them) are the following, among others:

Tipulidae
Cecidomyiidae
Sciaridae
Ceratopogonidae
Chironomidae
Stratiomyidae
Asilidae
Empididae
Phoridae
Tephritidae
Chloropidae
Sarcophagidae
Sphaeroceridae
Tachinidae

Some of these groups have one or more good workers in them, but to my knowledge they are not working as a true team on alpha taxonomy. The dolichopodid people are well-organized, however, lead by Marc Pollet. A couple of people I know are splitting up the psychodids, but more help is needed, in my opinion.

I realize that sciarids, for example, are not as much fun to work on as syrphids, but they really need some people to take them on.

Theo: If you want to start a tabanid team, you should go ahead and do it. Email John Burger and others and decide how to split up the pie. Declare yourselves a team and start asking museums and collectors to loan or exchange material with you. Be willing to sort through lots of repetitious material to find something good.

I hope I don't offend anyone with this post. No disrespect intended.

Brian