The European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy (EDIT) is a five-year, EU-funded Network of Excellence, the purpose of which is to encourage better integration of effort in taxonomy across Europe. It has long been felt that support for taxonomy will be much improved if taxonomists can unify their effort and ‘work as one’. That is a demanding aim, but we can at least try to move towards it.

EDIT is formed of a consortium of many European institutions. The project is divided into a number of ‘Workpackages’, one of which (WP6) is dedicated to ‘Unifying Revisionary taxonomy’. The Lepidoptera and Diptera have been selected as demonstrator taxa for this Workpackage. For Diptera there are currently two target taxa, Milichiidae and Sciaroidea for both of which websites have been established. The project provides an ideal opportunity to consider working together more effectively. We should like to build on the goodwill that exists between entomologists (professional and amateur) in the hope of furthering the aims of EDIT, of taxonomy, and, particularly, of lepidopterology and dipterology.

For more information on the EDIT Insect Exemplar group visit www.edit-insects.info. The site is aimed to be a communication tool so that you can participate and ‘have a say’ in the development of the structures needed to build revisionary taxonomy on the web.