As always, we here in Washington are greatly behind where we wanted to be, but much progress was made during the past 12 months. So, here is our 2005 annual report based on the one we did last year.

BDWD
We for the first time contributed names to the Catalogue of Life: 2005 Annual Checklist, a joint project of Species2000 and ITIS. Our contribution of 131,100 was the largest of any and pushed the checklist to over a half million species (527,000) for the first time. Users, however, should continue to use our BDWD online Nomenclator as we produce complete and comprehensive information on taxa and names.

On data entry we completed the fossil Diptera from Evenhuis (1994) and the old names from Sherborn I (1758-1800). Only Sherborn II (1800-1850) still needs to be checked against our BDWD. Before version 8.5 goes online (planned for March), we hope to have this done along with an up-date from Zoological Record, so we will be complete with respect to all Diptera names through 2005, the two hundredth anniversary of Fabricius' Systema antliatorum.

BDWD statistics
Version 7.5 was put online in October. This version includes 258,215 name records representing 150,696 species. Also, there are 20,190 references online. See under status at the BDWD site for the up-to-date break-out of species and genera (extant only) by families. Our growth rates are tapering off as we have completed phase I, data capture from secondary sources. There was only 2 % (353) increase in genus-group names, 1 % (2,425) increase in species-group names and 5 % increase in the reference file. In addition to adding more names, we are now concentrating on improving the quality of the data. By the end of 2005, 16 % of species-group names and 27 % of genus-group names were linked to the reference file, for 13 % of species-group names and 23 % of genus-group names the nomenclatural review was completed and for 6 % of species-group names and 10 % of genus-group names the taxonomic review was completed.

MYIA
We are almost done with MYIA 12 and hope to have it off to the printers soon. The volume is a mixture of various contributions illustrating the range of work that the BDWD program will support and publish. That includes several monographic catalogs (Carnidae, Coelopidae, Diastatidae, Dryomyzidae, Helcomyzidae, Heterocheilidae, Odiniidae and Periscelididae), few catalogs (Xylomyiidae, Xylophagidae), updates of previously published catalogs (Stratiomyidae), a regional treatment (Neotropical Conopidae), a checklist (Nearctic Ceratopogonidae), a couple of author treatments, one comprehensive (Kowarz) and the other brief (Hendel), and an article on serial dating.

Then we have commitments to do world catalogs for mosquitoes, therevids, acrocerids and drosophilids during the near future. And maybe even Nearctic flower flies.

Digital editions (Tools)
We have continued our cooperative work with the Smithsonian Libraries.
Sherborn's Index Animalium has now been scanned and is available online. The digital images have been converted to text, from which a database will be developed. Both Kertész's Catalogus Dipterorum (7 vols) and Becker et alia Katalog der Paläarktischen Diptera (4 vols) have been scanned and will be available online shortly.

Funding
We were successful and have received funding again this year from the Schlinger Foundation. Funding is available to continue Irina’s fellowship another year (until 1 November 2006). And we have resources to produce 3 MYIA and other things.

Web Interface
Irina has been updating the Diptera Web site continually. However, we still need to get all our tools online as well as our species interface. And then we will have to migrate our whole system to version 8 of FileMakerPro. We are currently using version 6. Because of the great challenges involved and our need to focus on the science of the BDWD, we will probably hire consultants to do this conversion for us. The consolidation of our FMP system in version 8 and the availability of better and more comprehensive XML tools will greatly streamline our process of disseminating information online (WWW) or in print format (MYIA).

Challenges for 2006
These remains much the same as those for 2005.

We only have web pages or links to such for about 12 % of the currently recognized fly families (22 out of 188). We should be able to produce a minimal page for each family of Diptera by the end of 2006.

Generic and species pages are even fewer, but we should try to generate more of them. Most of our colleagues still think in terms of papers like Chris' old professor wrote, “New and little-known crane flies ...” and how many and how fast they can publish new species. Unfortunately, that is the past and the future is building a new digital Systema Naturae with taxon web pages. As an encouragement to workers to do so, we will start a system like ZooTaxa where we will publish paper versions so that new taxonomic information can be validated when prepared as taxon web pages (that is, we will freely distribute to a core set of libraries paper archive copies of the new taxon web pages we post at the Diptera Web site). We are now working on the new standards for these pages, but Irina’s milichiid site is a good example.

The other challenges are outlined above: 1) getting 3 volumes of MYIA published; 2) getting the data from Sherborn II integrated into BDWD; 3) completing the references from secondary sources and linking them to the appropriate name records; 4) getting the species interface and tools online; and 5) as outlined in our data plan a revised Nearctic names data set for ITIS.

Irina Brake & Chris Thompson
13 January 2006