8 R. W. CROSSKEY 
Abdominal tergites are indicated by the letter T followed by the appropriate 
number; the composite first apparent tergite is Tr + 2, the usual last visible 
tergite T5. Abdominal sternites are indicated by the letters St suffixed as for 
tergites (only the male St5 generally 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 
