TACHINIDAE OF AUSTRALIA 7 



the worker interested in taking up this group has some means at hand for 

 beginning on a study of the Tachinidae without necessarily having immediate 

 access to a large museum collection: to aid the student as much as possible a 

 detailed glossary is given of all the main terms used in the keys. 



The Tachinidae is a taxonomically very difficult family, as Colless & McAlpine 

 (1970) have emphasized in their account of the Australian Diptera, and it is 

 notoriously difficult to make keys that are free from all possibility of error when 

 identifying specimens. Specialists on the family frequently find difficulty in 

 using keys, and not infrequently make errors of identification in spite of their 

 knowledge of the family; these points are emphasized, so that the beginner on 

 the group shall not feel too discouraged when keys appear to fail (as they will 

 occasionally, since much of the fauna remains unknown) or when the specimen 

 that ran out so convincingly to a certain name proves to be something quite 

 different. 



MATERIAL AND METHODS 



The keys and diagnostic matter are mainly based on a study of material in the 

 British Museum (Natural History), London, together with a study of types 

 (especially those of the type-species of Australian genera) from the collections in 

 Berlin, Canberra, Eberswalde, Ottawa, Paris, Vienna and Washington. The 

 BMNH collection is the largest and most representative of world Tachinidae, and, 

 except for the Australian National Insect Collection, is richer in material from 

 Australia than other collections. 



With few exceptions the early stages of Australian Tachinidae remain completely 

 unknown and the keys are, perforce, based only on adult characters. For 

 describing these the following conventions and abbreviations are used. 



In describing the positions of leg setae the convention is followed of imagining 

 the leg to be extended at a right-angle to the longitudinal axis of the fly, when: 



a anterior /> posterior 



ad anterodorsal pd posterodorsal 



av antcroventral pv posteroventral 



d dorsal v ventral 



A tibial seta indicated bv any of these letters is on the shaft of the tibia and not at its 

 end unless otherwise specified. 



The abbreviations used for thoracic setae are: 



pra pre-alar 



prst acr presutural acrostichal 



prst dc presutural dorsocentral 



prst ia presutural intra-alar 



post acr postsutural acrostichal sa supra-alar 



post dc postsutural dorsocentral stpl sternopleural 

 post ia postsutural intra-alar 



acr 



acrostichal 



dc 



dorsocentral 



ia 



intra-alar 



ph 



posthumeral 



