6 R. W. CROSSKEY 



(Celebes and Timor therefore being included but the Moluccas excluded). To 

 deal with southern China it has been considered best to include the nine southern 

 provinces (Szechwan, Yunnan, Kweichow, Kwangsi-Chuang, Hunan, Kwangtung, 

 Kiangsi, Fukien, Chekiang) and Shanghai as a whole rather than attempt some 

 imagined faunistic line between the Palaearctic and Oriental regions: in practice 

 this is advantageous as it brings in a large number of forms with a Palaearctic 

 facies, especially those based on material collected by the American missionary 

 D. C. Graham in Szechwan, that tend otherwise to get ignored. The Chagos 

 Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, from which one tachinid is known, is included 

 and also the Ryukyu Islands. 



Composition of the fauna. Tachinidae are found more or less everywhere 

 in the Oriental Region but, presumably through lack of collecting, are unrecorded 

 from little-known island groups such as the Andamans, Nicobars, Laccadives and 

 Maldives. The rich fauna comprises at the moment (in round figures) some 200 

 genera and 700 species, though many undescribed species exist in collections and 

 the fauna when fully worked out will certainly prove to be much richer in species 

 than it appears at present. The fauna is not, broadly speaking, remarkable for any 

 exceptional characteristics and - as would be expected from the geographical unity 

 of Eurasia - is not essentially any different from that of the Palaearctic Region. 

 Virtually all of the suprageneric taxa, and many genera, are held in common with 

 other zoogeographical regions, although some tribes and genera that are primarily 

 Holarctic are largely confined to the northern border regions of the Oriental area 

 and can be looked upon as intruders from the Palaearctic Region. The Oriental 

 fauna also possesses a few elements that it appears to have received from a contrary 

 direction, the most obvious being the Rutiliini which have probably penetrated 

 into south-east Asia from Australasia. A few individual tribes or genera have 

 proliferated more richly in the tropical parts of the Oriental Region than elsewhere, 

 examples being the genera Dexia Meigen (Prosenini), Lophosia Meigen (Cylindro- 

 myiini) and Servillia Robineau-Desvoidy (Tachinini), but in the main a dipterist 

 familiar with the Tachinidae of Europe would find little to astonish him when 

 collecting these flies in southern Asia or the East Indies. 



PART I — KEYS TO THE SUPRASPECIFIC TAXA OF ORIENTAL 



TACHINIDAE 



INTRODUCTION 



The British Museum (Natural History), London, houses the largest and most 

 completely representative collection of Oriental Tachinidae to be found in any 

 museum, and this work is based primarily upon a study of its material. In addition 

 material, including particularly primary types, has been studied from a large 

 number of other institutions, a list of which will be found on p. 156. Type-material 

 has been seen of nearly all Tachinidae described from the Oriental area and this 

 has ensured that each of the several hundred Oriental genera already named has 

 been correctly understood. Whenever synonymy amongst generic names has 



