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This volume represents the eighth 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. 5) and for an on-line facility for the identification of the Geometridae of New Guinea, and has had a contribution of technical support time therefrom through the Smithsonian Institution.
I have enjoyed the support of a part-time research assistant, Shayleen James, followed for a short period by Kim Harman, generously funded by The Friends of the Natural History Museum. Subsequently, the role of support with dissections has been taken 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 proof-reading and preparation of the genitalia figures for this part, and to prepare a database for a general index and bibliography for the series. His 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. I am very grateful to my wife, Phillipa, for keyboarding and layout of the text and figure legends.
The work 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 Zoological Museum of the University of Copenhagen, the Musée Nationale d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, the Museum für Naturkunde, Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, the Museo Civico di Zoologia, Rome, 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.
Thanks are also due to Henry Barlow, Michael Fibiger, Tony Galsworthy, Martin Honey, Ian Kitching, Lutz Kobes, Vladimir Kononenko, Martin Lödl, Geoff Martin, Mamoru Owada, Gaden Robinson and Laszlo Ronkay for advice, information, discussions and comments on parts or all of the text.
In naming new species in the genera Rivula, Bertula, Polypogon and Hypenagonia, I have continued to pay tribute to those teachers (alas, many now deceased) at Bryanston School who were my mentors during my time there, having originally named one (Holloway, 1976) after G.D. Harthan, one of my tutors and biology teachers
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