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 p _ posterior 
ad anterodorsal pd_ posterodorsal 
av anteroventral pv posteroventral 
d dorsal v ventral 
A tibial seta indicated by 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: 
acy acrostichal pra pre-alar 
dc dorsocentral prst acy presutural acrostichal 
wa intra-alar prst dc presutural dorsocentral 
ph posthumeral prst ia presutural intra-alar 
post acy postsutural acrostichal sa supra-alar 
post dc postsutural dorsocentral stl sternopleural 
post ia postsutural intra-alar 
