17 NOTES ON GENUS CALLIPHORA (DIPTERA). CLASSIFICATION, SYNONYMY, DISTKIBUTION AND PHYLOGENY. By G. H. Hakdy. (One Text-figure.) [Read 31st March, 1937.] The difficulties met in taxonomic study are responsible for considerable differences in the treatment of Australian species of Calliphora. Many promising studies have proved inadequate to meet the needs of the research worker, and although progress is being made in the study of details of morphology, so far there is no generally accepted scheme for their classification. Actually the work was undertaken first by Johnston and Hardy in 1922, but hardly any progress could be made owing to the lack of a suitable method of treating the terminalia. The problem was taken up again in later years by myself, but in the meanwhile material had been sent to Malloch, resulting in a paper that the late E. W. Ferguson (These Proceedings, lii, 1927, p. xxiv) considered would solve the problem. Some progress in the taxonomy of Australian Calliphoras was made in my paper of 1930, followed by another in 1932. The first of these brought considerable adverse comment at the time, but the attitude I had taken up in my treatment was subsequently acknowledged as leading somewhere. I do not think, however, that it was sufficiently recognized that the specific identities I had given rested largely on field observations which are difficult to set down in print. There were certain biological features arising from my studies, and I concluded that there are units in the Australian Calliphoras that cannot be isolated on terminalia alone, as far as yet known, but can be ascertained on colour and small structural characters that remain consistent for the species, not grading from one to another as at first would be supposed. These cases are represented by C. rufipes Macq. and fallax Hardy; by C. augur Fab. and nociva Hardy; by C. tibialis Macq. and perida, a new species described below. I have not found any area where the first two meet, but the distributions of the others overlap. The arrangements of the species within this genus, given by Professor W. S. Patton (1935) and by myself, are at variance. Patton makes three main groups based on the type of terminalia the species exhibit. On the other hand, as will be seen below, this is not so very different from my arrangement, the differences lying mainly in the position where the dividing lines are to be drawn. The true relationship will be gathered when all features of the fiy are considered phylo-genetically, and I would be in agreement with Professor Patton if he were to limit his view on affinities and if he did not make the development of the terminalia cover the whole species. There can be no doubt that Professor Patton, in arranging his studies along the line he has taken, is making a very big step in advance in our understanding of terminalia, but it is my impression that he carries his conclusions to a stage that is a too liberal rendering of his discoveries. A comparison of our respective methods of classification is to be gathered in the following list, where I have marked with an asterisk (*) those species in which I have an intimate knowledge of terminalia. The list is only complete as far as G
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