168 R. W. CROSSKE Y 
forestry, there has not up to now been any published host-list for the Australian 
Tachinidae. The only published host records available have been scattered in 
original tachinid descriptions or cited haphazardly in departmental reports or in 
accounts of particular pests, and these were the main sources for the relatively few 
entries in W. R. Thompson’s A Catalogue of the Parasites and Predators of Insect 
Pests concerned with Australian Tachinidae. Many of the earlier records existing 
in these various publications cannot be relied upon, either because of changes 
in the nomenclature of the hosts and parasites or because of misidentification, 
especially of the tachinids, and for some time an up-to-date host catalogue for the 
Australian Tachinidae has been needed that is based so far as possible on reliably 
named hosts and parasites and on the latest information available. 
The host catalogue here presented may not be exhaustive, as there are probably 
some tachinid specimens scattered in Australian collections that were reared from 
known hosts but have not been available during the present study. Nevertheless 
the lists of hosts and parasites are sufficiently comprehensive to form useful basic 
lists that can be gradually augmented as more evidence on the host-relations is 
acquired. 
A major difficulty in compiling dependable host-parasite lists is the unreliability 
of the identifications. As a rule, material of the hosts is not kept in collections 
with the reared Tachinidae so that confirmation of identity of both host and 
parasite is difficult or impossible. In general, however, it is likely that the hosts 
will have been correctly identified, since they are commonly well known pests and 
often are conspicuous Lepidoptera whose specific identities are not in doubt (even 
if the lepidopterists are in dispute about the generic placements). On the other 
hand identities of tachinid parasites are likely to be wrong unless they have 
been recently checked by a specialist on the group (and in some difficult groups 
of tachinids even this is no gaurantee for every specimen). In preparing the 
accompanying parasite-host and host-parasite lists it has been assumed that the 
hosts have been correctly identified, but the tachinids have only been recorded 
when: (1) they have been personally identified, (2) when the host record is from the 
original type-material of the tachinid parasite, or (3) when published records, 
other than the original descriptions, are undoubtedly based on correctly identified 
Tachinidae. The last circumstance is relatively infrequent, and most host records 
in the literature have been discounted because the identities cited for the tachinid 
parasites are either wrong or suspect (for example, most of G. H. Hardy’s 
identifications of Australian Tachinidae were based on guesswork from the 
literature and in consequence were often in error: hence his published host records 
have usually been discounted). 
The information for the host catalogue derives largely from specimens in the 
collection of the British Museum (Natural History). Many of these specimens 
have been received from time to time as duplicate specimens submitted to the 
Commonwealth Institute of Entomology for identification, usually by Australian 
state departments of agriculture and forestry; for this reason the BMNH collection. 
is more comprehensive than any other in Australian Tachinidae reared from known 
hosts, and the host catalogue is almost as completely comprehensive as it is possible 
