RESEARCH/CURATION OF COLLECTIONS IN MEXICO

August 2010
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Brett Ratcliffe

Co-PIs Brett Ratcliffe and Ronald Cave traveled to Mexico during August 2010 to identify specimens, capture label data, and curate collections for our project on the Dynastinae of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. From 23-26 August we worked at the Colección Nacional de Insectos at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City, where curators Santiago Zaragoza (Lampyridae, Phengodidae, Lycidae) and Harry Brailovsky (Coreidae and Lygaeidae) and student Fernando Alberto Bitar (Scarabaeidae) were our hosts. Alberto was extremely helpful in providing us with a ride to and from the university (a huge campus) each day. This collection of about 1.8 million specimens is housed in a compactor system and has material from all over Mexico, but the emphasis (at least for Dynastinae) was mostly central Mexico. On Friday, 27 August, we visited the Museo de Historia Natural de la Ciudad de Mexico in Chapultepec Park where entomology curator Maria Eugenia Diaz Batres (Lepidoptera) generously provided us access and work space to this small, historical collection.

On Sunday, 29 August, we flew to Guadalajara and worked in the collection of the Universidad de Guadalajara for the next two days. This collections is nicely organized, and most of the holdings are from Jalisco, but there are specimens from the entire country. Curator José Luis Navarrete-Heredia (Staphylinidae) assisted us greatly by setting us up with work space, providing a ride each day (the university is about 20 km outside of the city!), and lunch, thus maximizing our work time.