8 R. W. CROSSKEY 



Abdominal tergites are indicated by the letter T followed by the appropriate 

 number; the composite first apparent tergite is Ti + 2, the usual last visible 

 tergite T5. Abdominal sternites are indicated by the letters St suffixed as for 

 tergites (only the male St5 generaUy requires citation). 



Parts of the male hypopygium are infrequently cited in the keys, but the 

 terminology used by Colless & McAlpine (1970) is used throughout the paper 

 whenever genital features are mentioned. 



All keys are regularly dichotomous. The keys include names of a few genera 

 that are not yet positively known from Australia but seem likely to be found 

 there: in such cases the names are printed in non-bold type. Where a generic 

 name is included in square brackets in the keys it indicates that the tribal position 

 of the genus concerned is uncertain, but that the genus is included in a different 

 tribe in the formal classification adopted from the one to which the key relates. 



Figures have all been drawn personally and attempt to show only the essentials 

 required for identification (needless shading and vestiture have been omitted). 

 An attempt has been made to illustrate basic patterns of chaetotaxy (see 

 Text-figs 4, 7 & 54-63) on the thorax by omitting the bristles themselves and 

 indicating their distribution just by the 'pore-patterns' of their insertions. 

 Such a method of illustrating chaetotaxy seems hardly to have been used at all 

 in tachinid taxonomy but provides a useful visual aid for recollecting the most 

 fundamental and frequently recurring patterns. It must be emphasized that the 

 circles indicating the bristle pores are exaggerated in size relative to the sclerites, 

 but that different sized circles are used to show (approximately) the relative sizes 

 of the bristles to each other. Broken lines between circles indicate the serially 

 arranged setae that have the same composite terminology. 



AN ANNOTATED GLOSSARY OF CHARACTERS AND TERMS USED IN THE KEYS 



The glossary here given summarizes the terminology used in the keys, so as 

 to make these as comprehensible as possible to the non-specialist (including in 

 particular the Australian student who might wish to take up tachinid taxonomy). 

 Hardly any of the recent works - and very few old works - contain any glossary 

 of the terms habitually used by taxonomists working on the Tachinidae, and the 

 glossary here presented ought (it is hoped) to be of benefit to my specialist 

 colleagues in so far as it attempts to define the external adult characters most often 

 used in supraspecific taxonomy and to correlate the various synonymic terms 

 most commonly used by different authors. 



The terminology adopted is that which appears to be the most universally 

 accepted, and most readily comprehended, by specialists. It is, however, essentially 

 a taxonomist's vocabulary, and some of the terms are at variance with those 

 favoured by the morphologist. This point is specially germane when dealing 

 with the Australian fauna, as Colless & McAlpine (1970) in their work on the 

 Australian Diptera have adopted a strongly morphological line for their structural 

 terminology, and there are therefore some discrepancies between the taxonomic 

 terminology and that of Colless & McAlpine; in particular this affects the names 



