SYNONYMICAL NOTES ON NEOTROPICAL 



FLIES OF THE FAMILY TABANIDAE 



(DIPTERA)^ 



By G. B. FAIRCHILD 

 Gorgas Memorial Laboratory, Panama 



The nomenclature of the Neotropical flies of the family Tabanidae 

 has long been in a state of great confusion, in spite of the efforts of a 

 number of students to bring it into some sort of order. The main dif- 

 ficulties seem to have been the lack of adequate collections in any one 

 place and the very numerous inadequate descriptions by several of the 

 older authors. The existing catalogs of Kertesz (1900, 1908) and 

 Surcouf (1921) for the Tabanidae of the World are quite uncritical 

 and are chiefly lists of names. The catalog of the Neotropical Tabani- 

 dae prepared by Krober (1934) was a great step forward, but subse- 

 quent work has modified greatly the understanding of generic and 

 higher categories, and he failed in many cases to appreciate the value 

 of a study of the type specimens of the older descriptions. His cata- 

 log, therefore, although extremely useful, has often proved unreliable. 



During the fall of 1953 I was enabled, through the aid of a generous 

 travel grant from the Marsh Fund of the National Academy of Sci- 

 ences, to visit the British Museum in London and the Museum 

 d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. The trip was undertaken for the purpose 

 of studying and comparing specimens with the types of Neotropical 

 Tabanidae (horse flies and allies) contained in the collections of the 

 British Museum in London and the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in 

 Paris. The Neotropical species of Tabanidae described by Francis 

 Walker between 1848 and i860, by M. J. Macquart between 1834 and 

 1855, and by J. M. F. Bigot in 1892 have been a serious stumbling 

 block to students for many years. Not only did these three authors 

 among them describe some 300 species, but their descriptions were, for 

 the most part, so superficial and inadequate that a large proportion of 

 their names have remained unrecognized or misinterpreted. Further- 

 more, some 27 generic names have been based on these species, often 

 without adequate knowledge of their characters. Although the primary 



1 Published through a grant from the Gorgas Memorial Institute of Tropical 

 and Preventive Medicine, Incorporated. 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS, VOL. 131, NO. 3 



