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I (Andrew) spent most of September in Venezuela doing fieldwork and visiting colleagues at the Universidad del Zulia in Maracaibo and the Universidad Central de Venezela in Maracay. After meeting Mauricio Garcia in Caracas, we spent some time in Amazonas and northern Bolivar states with Luis Joly. The primary goal of this trip was to intensively survey rock face seeps for additional material of some new Myxophaga we had found on our previous expedition in 2006. Needless to say, it would have been hard to do any better than we did---the Myxophaga were out in full force, both in specimens and taxa. Also of particular note was our recollection of Meruidae--including the first known larvae. Previously known only from the type locality, we were able to collect this rare family in four other localities. Other groups of hydrophilids that were common in January were now mostly absent. I mostly attributed this to the fact that many of the marginal habitats that harbor most of these taxa were under water. Most rivers were running at least twice as high as before. After our stint south of the Orinoco and some time back at the collection in Maracay, Mauricio and I headed back to Maracaibo for some collecting in the Serrania de Perija, the Andean spur that forms the western Venezuela-Colombia border. Jesus Camacho from MALUZ joined us for this part of the trip. There had been a rather serious rainstorm not long before we arrived (e.g. the kind that can take out bridges), so some streams were pretty scoured and the rivers weren't even worth trying to collect in. Nevertheless, we were able to get some interesting things, and I was excited to get some Hydrobaticus specimens here--which is only the second record from South America (the first was in the Andes near Merida on our expedition last year!).
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