[HELICONIUS] Type photos of Tropical Lepidoptera

[James Mallet]

 >!Ultimas noticias!<

From: Keith Willmott <kwillmott at flmnh.ufl.edu>
Subject: ithomiine type photos

Hola Ithomiinologos,

Some of you know that as part of our tropical Andean butterfly 
project we scanned most of Gerardo's type photos of neotropical 
butterflies - some time ago, actually. The delay in them appearing 
online has been largely technical, but through a new and inspired 
collaboration with the Butterflies of America project it seems they 
could finally be available very shortly, in the next few weeks, after 
we've dealt with a few of the more obvious problems. In fact, you can 
see the progress we've made here (the website design and programming 
is by Nick Grishin), which is a publicly accessible site that is just 
not linked anywhere yet - please keep the link to yourselves until 
we, and in particular the BoA people, deem it sufficiently ready for 
public release:

http://www.butterfliesofamerica.com/L/Neotropical.htm

Anyway, no doubt you navigated immediately to the ithomiines (even 
you people who pretend to be more interested in Heliconius), and were 
dismayed to find nothing there. Ithomiines and dismorphiines were two 
of the main groups not completed (in addition to skippers), so we are 
now looking for extra funding to get these done. I estimate about 
$1000 should be sufficient for ithomiines and dismorphiines. Since 
TABDP finished a while back, we are trying to raise the money through 
small (or larger, if you prefer, and want to see the skippers 
there...) contributions from anyone with any spare funds and an 
interest in seeing this project completed, if we all contribute 
$1-200 we'll get there almost immediately. Please let me know if you 
think you might be able to contribute - absolutely any amount would 
be appreciated.

Thanks,

Keith