Villa Zurqui grounds

Fifteen dipterists from around the world, plus grad students, parataxonomists, and other interested biologists, are converging on Zurqui de Moravia next week as part of our ZADBI (Zurqui All Diptera Biodiversity Inventory) project: our attempt to inventory all the flies at a single tropical site. Although we are collecting with a battery of traps and general techniques, we are relying on the years of field experience our collaborators possess to ferret out the hard-to-find species from our site.

Wayne (left) and Sergio

Although the blitz does not officially commence until Monday, our first early arrivals were Wayne Mathis and wife Diane, who set off from our beautiful hotel, Villa Zurqui, this morning and came back this afternoon with about 13 species of ephyrdrids, plus one new family for the project, Diastatidae. Awesome start, Wayne!

Today, Sergio Ibanez & son Diego arrived from Mexico as part of the psychodid (moth fly) duo (along with Greg Curler, who will be coming soon). Tomorrow, we’ll all go to Zurqui and see what else we can find.

PS: see our project web site phorid.net/zadbi