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 2007 annual report based on the one we did last.

BDWD
We, for the second time, contributed names to the Catalogue of Life: 2008 Annual Checklist, a joint project of Species2000 and ITIS. Our contribution of 133,746 species was the 3rd of any (only Lepidoptera and ITIS contributed more) and pushed the checklist to over a million species (1,105,589) 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 capture of all name from secondary sources.  All names from the recent Zoological Record through volume 142 have been incorporated. Only Sherborn II (1800-1850) still needs to be checked against our BDWD.

BDWD statistics
Version 9.5 was put online in June. This version includes 266,504 name records representing 150,696 species. Also, there are 24,762 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 1 % (208) increase in genus-group names, 1 % (2,262) increase in species-group names and 15 % 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 2007, 30 % of species-group names and 44 % of genus-group names were linked to the reference file, for 15 % of species-group names and 27 % of genus-group names the nomenclatural review was completed and for 6 % of species-group names and 11 % 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. These efforts have now becoming the Biodiversity Hertiage Library project. The Smithsonian has taken the lead for digitalization of entomological works, so we hope to see much of the Diptera literature online soon.

Funding
We have continued to receive funding from the Schlinger Foundation to support a post-doctoral fellow. Owen Lonsdale started in May as our current fellow. Besides helping with BDWD, he is working on a number of small families, such as the Clusiidae, Tanypezidae, and Agromyzidae.

Web Interface
With the departure of Irina Brake, the Diptera Web site has remained static except for updating the statistics for the new version. 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 9 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 9 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 2008
These remains much the same as our previous ones.

First there are the challenges for the BDWD: 1) getting 3 volumes of MYIA published; 2) getting our data cross-checked against Sherborn II; 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.

Second is working with new online initiatives, such as the Encyclopedia of Life to ensure that every fly species has it own web page!

Chris Thompson
13 June 2008