---

Dear Sara,

There are very few people in the world who study Phoridae. Henry Disney and I are among them. The problem is that so many people request identifications, that a researcher could spend an entire career identifying other people's material and never getting to their own research. Therefore, Henry would probably want to know why you need to identify your flies and what your project might be. Then he could decide whether or not he could help you.

As Paul indicated it can be difficult to identify Phoridae to species. I don't think that Disney's Megaselia book is as difficult as Paul says, but then again I am accustomed to looking at these flies.

I hope that this helps you understand the situation better. If you want to ask Henry for his assistance, it is easy to find his e-mail address on the web. Just out of curiosity, what is your project, how many phorids do you have for identification, and how are they preserved?

Brian