6th International Congress of Dipterology in Fukuoka in September 2006

[Torsten Dikow:]

Dear Colleagues,

Many of you will have recently received the first announcement for the 6th International Congress of Dipterology in Fukuoka in September 2006. I know very well that it is still a long time until then and that most of us will not know at this stage if they will attend at all, but one cannot start early enough to make plans for this important event. Maybe some of you would attend the meeting if there would be a special workshop or event devoted to Asiloidea?

Therefore, I would like to let you know that I am planning to organise a workshop devoted to Asiloidea (or be at least part of a group of organisers) for the Fukuoka meeting. This workshop could deal with many aspects of asiloid flies, including taxonomy, biodiversity, phylogeny, morphology, and behaviour and emphasis could be targeted on:

revisionary taxonomic studies of representatives of Asiloidea giving insights on species diversity & distributions

phylogenetic relationships of taxa of Asiloidea & monophyly of Asiloidea itself

phylogenetic relationships of subordinate taxa within currently recognised families

biodiversity of asiloid flies within zoogeographical regions, specific environments, etc.

studies dealing with morphology or behaviour of imagines & larvae

Recently, many research projects focused on Asiloidea, e.g. countless revisionary studies & species descriptions, the description of a new family Ocoidae, a major research project on Therevidae, and many more will be conducted during the next year or so. The recently started project "Assembling the Tree of Life - Diptera" (info at: http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/cee/FLYTREE/index.html) will increase our knowledge of the pyhlogenetic relationships of Diptera as a whole and the Asiloidea research will certainly benefit from that. I can imagine that interesting findings dealing with our group of flies will have emerged from this extensive research project before the Fukuoka conference.

Unfortunately, we did not have an official workshop dealing with Asiloidea in Brisbane, although many researchers interested in taxa of Asiloidea attended the meeting. So let us think about the next congress and get together to exchange ideas, interests, & projects dealing with this interesting group of flies. I myself plan to present research on Asilidae that is currently part of my Ph.D. dissertation.

If you are generally interested in participating in or help organising such a workshop (no commitment necessary at this stage) please feel free to contact me and start thinking about the Fukuoka congress.

Best wishes, Torsten

p.s.: Please also distribute this invitation to researchers who might be interested in an Asiloidea workshop that are not among the addresses of this e-mail. Thanks.

Torsten Dikow

e-mail:
torsten@tdvia.de
tdikow@amnh.org

address:
Division of Invertebrate Zoology
American Museum of Natural History
79th Street at Central Park West
New York, NY 10024
U.S.A.