This week, Bruno and Aline visited one of the most important weevil collection in the USA: the Charles O’Brien collection at Arizona State University.
Its importance comes not only from its impressive size, but also the amazing state of curation, benefitting from the years of careful work and passion by Charles O’Brien. Incidentally, he and the current of the collection - Nico Franz - have sone a lot of taxonomic work in flower-associated weevils, rendering it especially relevant for these groups.
Aline has found a lot of material for the ongoing phylogeny of Eugnomini, which we will soon take to the Field Museum. Also a great opportunity to see friends - some of them for the first time without a Zoom screen in the middle - and to take a break of Chicago weather.
Overall a great trip, and many important results will come from it!
Bruno and Aline can’t get enough weevils at the O’Brien collection