::The Moths of Borneo::

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This volume represents the tenth part of the series I have undertaken as a Scientific Associate of the Natural History Museum, with access to collections, libraries and with working space and facilities provided in the Department of Entomology. I am grateful also for continued use of a microscope on loan from the International Institute of Entomology (IIE; now part of CABI Bioscience). The work, particularly that on the higher classification, has been providing a taxonomic context for ongoing ecological projects in Papua New Guinea (see p. 4) and for an on-line facility for the identification of the Geometridae of New Guinea, and has had a contribution of technical support from time to time through the Smithsonian Institution.

I have enjoyed the support of a part-time research assistant over the years from 1994 to 2006, generously funded by The Friends of the Natural History Museum. This assistance was provided, in succession by Mandy Heddle, Nuría Lopez Mercader, Maia Vaswani, Shayleen James (now Sadler) and Kim Harman. Subsequently, the role of support with dissections was continued over on a part‑time basis by Dr John Pollock, who has prepared the majority of those needed for this part, funded by Henry Barlow. Henry is currently funding Maia Vaswani, now in France, to help with preparation of the genitalia figures for this part (including some dissection). Henry’s support has also been indispensable for seeing the series through to publication in Malaysia, and this volume is published in conjunction with the Malaysian Nature Society. The colour plate images were prepared and compiled by Jonathan Brunton. For the earlier parts, this was also undertaken by Bernard d'Abrera or the Photo Unit of The Natural History Museum. I am very grateful to my wife, Phillipa, for keyboarding and layout of the text and figure legends, and for her patience and tolerance during the stress of putting this particularly large and complex volume together.

The work for this part would have been impossible without the full access, mentioned above, to the collections and other facilities in The Natural History Museum, London. Material was also examined physically in, or as images or loans from, the Nationaal Natuurhistorisch Museum (Naturalis), Leiden, the University Museum of Natural History, Oxford, the Australian National Insect Collection, Canberra, the Museum für Naturkunde, Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, the Heterocera Sumatrana Society with material partly in the care of Lutz Kobes and partly in the collection of the Zoologische Staatssammlung, Munich, the H.S. Barlow collection, the Forest Research Centre collection, Sepilok, and the FRIM collection, Kepong. I am grateful to the staff of all the above institutions for their assistance. The host records mentioned in previous parts are now almost entirely recorded by Robinson et al. (2001), but some additional data are noted in the text, particularly those accumulated by Vojtech Novotný, Scott Miller and an energetic team of parataxonomists in Papua New Guinea (see above), but also by Chey Vun Khen and Becky Morris in Sabah, and Henry Barlow and Simon K.L. Hok in Peninsular Malaysia, and Markku Pellinen in Thailand. Most recently, much valuable data on life histories has been obtained and published by Tzi Ming Leong and colleagues in Nature in Singapore.

I would like to thank my colleagues in current molecular investigation of the classification of the Noctuoidea, Reza Zahiri, Niklas Wahlberg, Marko Mutanen, Lauri Kaila, Don Lafontaine and Ian Kitching, for permitting me to incorporate results in progress into the classification and accompanying notes, flagged up as (Zahiri et al., in preparation).

Thanks are also due to Mike Allen, Henry Barlow, Evgeny Beljaev, Ron Brechlin, Karel Cerný, John Chainey, I-Ching Chen, Chey Vun Khen, Vladimir Dubatolov, Ted Edwards, Marc Epstein, Michael Fibiger, Tony Galsworthy, Alessandro Giusti, Tony Harman, Han Hongxiang, Axel Hausmann, Lauren Helgen, Hermann Hacker, the late Claude Herbulot, Martin Honey, Marianne Horak, the late Hiroshi Inoue, Takeo Kaneko, Catherine Karim, Ian Kitching, Lutz Kobes, Vladimir Kononenko, Don Lafontaine, Gyula László, David Lees, Albert Legrain, Michael Maehr, Geoff Martin, George McGavin, Wolfram Mey, Scott Miller, Joël Minet, Wolfgang Nässig, Stefan Naumann, Erik van Nieukerken, Mamoru Owada, Markku Pellinen, the late Gaden Robinson, Gabor Ronkay, Laszlo Ronkay, Klaus Sattler, Rikio Sato, Markku Savela, Alexander Schintlmeister, Olga Schmidt, Malcolm Scoble, Pasi Sihvonen, Thomas Simonsen, Alexey Solovyev, Manfred Sommerer, Wolfgang Speidel, Bo Sullivan, Dieter Stüning, Gerhard Tarmann, John Tennent, Colin Treadaway, Gerry Tremewan, Kevin Tuck, Kyoichiro Ueda, Pierre Viette, Rob de Vos, Susan Weller, John Willott, Xue Dayong, Katsumi Yazaki, Shen‑Horn Yen, Cathy Young, Alberto Zilli, Vadim Zolotuhin, Andreas Zwick and Jaap Zwier for advice, information, discussions and comments on parts or all of the text. Many of these also kept me informed of new records of species from Borneo, of errors located in various parts of the series, and sent me timely reprints or PDFs of relevant papers or other literature over the years, enabling me to keep up to date with fresh developments.

Postscript on Arctiini. At the point of going to press, the author became aware of the publication by Dubatolov & de Vos (2010) that presents an alternative tribal classification of the Bornean Arctiini genera. With one exception, these tribes are here downgraded to subtribes in accordance with the classification of Zahiri et al. (2011). The Spilosomina are unchanged except all the Spilosoma species are listed under Spilarctia (but see p. 373). Only Tinoliodes remains in the Callimorphina, with Utetheisa, Argina and relatives placed with Nyctemera in Nyctemerina. Two new tribes are proposed that include the two genera provisionally assigned to the Phaegopterina (see p. 372): Euchaetina, for the Euchaetes group mentioned on p. 372 that includes Pareuchaetes; Amerilini, to include Amerila, indicated on p. 376 as probably falling outside the Arctiini and meriting full tribal status. The classification within the Arctiini is probably in need of further study to establish greater stability.