REVISIONARY CLASSIFICATION OF RUTILIINI 5 
simpler objective of preparing an up-to-date catalogue of the Australian Tachinidae, 
a task which sounded easy enough but soon proved to be impossible without a really 
thorough revision of the Rutiliini. This group forms a very dominant element in 
the Australian Tachinid fauna, including at present about a quarter of the known 
species, and a catalogue of this large group based only on the muddled literature 
would have been not only useless but positively misleading. A dependable cata- 
logue had to be based on a study of all the types, especially those of the early 
authors whose nominal species had been neglected or misinterpreted, so that realistic 
generic assignments and at least the obvious synonymies in genus-group and 
species-group names could be worked out. But even to make a generic assignment 
of a nominal species presupposes some concept of the generic limits, and when 
trying to place species into genera it soon became obvious that none of the existing 
generic classifications (Townsend, 1938; Enderlein, 1936; Paramonov, 1968) could 
be used satisfactorily, although that of Paramonov was outstandingly superior to 
any other (in fact my own classification here presented is in close accord with that 
of Paramonov in the number and scope of recognized genera). In short, the only 
way in which the Rutiliini could be satisfactorily catalogued was by first preparing a 
full-scale revisionary classification of the whole tribe. 
The classification proposed here is based on the ‘old-fashioned’ methods of 
orthodox taxonomy, but the Rutiliini is a group which might lend itself well to the 
computer techniques of numerical taxonomy.. The use of mathematical methods 
was considered at one stage of the work but it was decided to abide by conventional 
methods for the time being, in the hope that later on an Australian student might 
take up the group and test it by mathematical methods on far more material than 
is currently available. Two of the main difficulties with classical taxonomy in the 
Rutiliini are those of ranking of segregates and delimitation of species. Broadly 
speaking it is easy enough with suites of characters taken in combination to define 
segregates within the tribe (or, looked at the other way, aggregates of species) but 
it is a very subjective matter whether these are ranked as species-groups or genus- 
group categories; I have not always been completely happy at the choice of rank, 
for it is difficult to ‘balance’ recognizable segregates, but I am convinced that the 
groupings I recognize are natural entities whatever rank they may be accorded. 
On what is a species I am less happy, as there are real difficulties in several genera 
and subgenera in determining specific limits (some entities that are apparently 
species have distinctive and constant male genitalia, for example, but others either 
show no genitalic differences or some baffling variation). 
Two particular aspects of the work require comment, the examinations of old 
types and the male genitalia. I have been able to see very nearly all of the types 
of the early authors (Bigot, Erichson, Fabricius, Gerstaecker, Guérin-Méneville, 
Macquart, Walker, Wiedemann), only very few of which are lost; the types of 
Donovan, Gray and Robineau-Desvoidy are all lost. Examinations of these old 
types have enabled many formerly enigmatic names to be placed, either as valid 
names or as synonyms (because of the difficulty in some groups of deciding on specific 
limits, synonyms have only been established if there is very perfect agreement of 
types), and have unmasked several misidentifications. 
