SE Brazil insects available for taxonomists

[Doug Yanega]

Hi, all. The time has come for me to make a concerted effort to "farm out"
much of the material I've personally accumulated here over the last two
years, as well as finding people who might be interested in material (in
alcohol) from a massive, intensive, year-long malaise sampling program
(approx 1 million total specimens). The vast majority of this material is
from the "cerrado", and some from the "campo rupestre". Another student in
the lab here works in local caves, and may also have material available for
study.
        I've already been in contact with a number of people (you know who
you are) interested in various taxa, and accordingly there are a fair
number of groups which are already effectively "spoken for" at present.
Notable among these are bees, ants, symphyta, chalcidoid, platygastroid,
proctotrupoid, cynipoid, and ichneumon wasps, clerids, meloids, lampyrids,
cerambycids, chlamisine and cassidine chrysomelids, scolytines, some
Cucujoids, buprestids, cicadas, coreids, ascalaphids, phorids, and
virtually all macrolepidoptera. If you have an ongoing revision in one of
the above groups which requires Brazilian material, and have not been in
contact with me before, it *may* still be possible to make arrangements.
Virtually anything not in the listing above is effectively up for grabs,
assuming we've got any - even if it's a *very* obscure group, just ask and
I'll tell you if we've got 'em.
        Among the malaise material is a VAST amount of diptera, but the
nematocera and acalyptratae are not sorted to family, though the brachycera
and calyptratae are, for the most part. Malaise lepidoptera are mostly
unsorted, and are mostly microleps. The coleoptera and hymenoptera from the
malaise samples *are* sorted to family, but the remaining orders (mostly
hemiptera and homoptera) are all together. Note also that there are almost
no aquatic taxa or strictly nocturnal taxa represented (the nematocera are
mostly cecidomyiids, sciarids, and mycetophilids), and few orthopteroids -
the malaise traps were run only during daylight hours.
        Interested folks should contact me directly (please don't respond
to the list), within the next two weeks at the latest, giving details of
the work for which the material would be used, and we can discuss other
details such as data/specimen repatriation privately - something to bear in
mind is that we have no museum here, and almost no boxes suitable for
shipping pinned material, so a general request is that people who want
pinned specimens may need to send as many such units as they can spare (the
cost of postage is likely to be bad enough without having to buy foam and
glue it into units by hand).

Now let's see if I can deal effectively with all the requests! ;-)

Peace,

Doug Yanega    Depto. de Biologia Geral, Instituto de Ciencias Biologicas,
Univ. Fed. de Minas Gerais, Cx.P. 486, 30.161-970 Belo Horizonte, MG   BRAZIL
phone: 31-499-2579, fax: 31-499-2567  (from U.S., prefix 011-55)
                  http://www.icb.ufmg.br/~dyanega/
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82