TACHINIDAE OF ORIENTAL REGION 123 



for which it is better - as an interim measure - to retain Carceliini in its usual 

 sense. This at least permits the 'tribe' to be readily enough differentiated from 

 other Goniinae by the simultaneous possession of three main characteristics: long 

 strong pre-alar seta; very large eyes and the gena so narrow that its height is less 

 than or no greater than the width of the profrons; non-hymenopterous hosts (which 

 differentiates the Carceliini from the Anacamptomyiini). 



Within the Carceliini so defined six genera are here recognized in the Oriental 

 fauna. One of these, viz. Thelyconychia, is, however, not strictly Oriental and is 

 listed and accounted for in the present work on the basis of one specimen in the 

 BMNH collection from the Punjab (PPakistan or India, precise locality uncertain) 

 of the Palaearctic species T. solivaga. The remaining five genera occur widely in 

 the Oriental Region and in other zoogeographical areas (Carcelia being nearly cosmo- 

 politan, Thecocarcelia occurring also in the Palaearctic and Ethiopian regions and 

 New Guinea, Argyrothelaira occurring also in the Australasian region, Argyrophylax 

 occurring also in Australasia and South America, and Hypersara in tropical Africa). 



Some comment is necessary concerning the treatment adopted for Carcelia s.l. 

 A taxonomic review of this complex was published by Baranov (1934^) in which 

 he recognized no fewer than twelve genera in the Oriental Region, six of which 

 were newly proposed (sometimes using characters of most improbable generic 

 value such as the length of the male claws). Unquestionably Baranov's splitting 

 was premature and unjustified in the inchoate state of knowledge then (and still) 

 existing on the Carceliini in general, and Mesnil (1944a) sank some of Baranov's 

 generic taxa to the status of subgenera (leaving other Baranov names unaccounted 

 for). For purposes of the present work I have been forced, in order to place the 

 several generic names proposed for Oriental forms by Baranov and Townsend, 

 to review the Carcelia complex to a superficial extent in order to define some compre- 

 hensible segregates into which the many described species can be placed. It must 

 be strongly emphasized that a comprehensive revision of Oriental Carcelia s.l. 

 is very much needed, that time has not permitted this during the present work, 

 and that the arrangement of the subgenera and species that I have adopted is merely 

 a temporary one intended to render some order into the complex and provide a 

 groundwork for future revision. I cannot claim to be fully satisfied with the arrange- 

 ment proposed, and remain in considerable doubt as to what suites of characters 

 should be deemed satisfactory for subgeneric definition (or generic definition if 

 any of the segregates were to be treated as full genera - which in the case of Seno- 

 metopia, at least, would probably be justified). At present only adult morphological 

 characters are available on which to classify the Oriental forms, and several so-called 

 species are known from very little material. But I have been able to see the primary 

 types of all the species described from the Oriental Region and this has made it 

 possible to aggregate the nominal species into 'subgeneric' groups that can be 

 identified by use of the subgeneric key. 



Before commenting on the carceliine genera other than Carcelia s.l. it is necessary 

 to clarify my use of the name Senometopia Macquart for a subgeneric entity within 

 Carcelia. In this work, as in my earlier work on the Australian fauna (Crosskey, 

 1973ft : 90, 147), I have followed Townsend (1936ft; 1941) in applying the name 



