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This
is the fourth 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).
I have enjoyed the support
of a part-time research assistant, Maia Vaswani, generously funded by The
Friends of the Natural History Museum. My thanks are due to them and to Maia,
who has undertaken a considerable amount of literature research, dissection,
text keyboarding, checking and help with preparation of the figures; she was
joined for the finishing touches to the work by her successor, Shayleen James.
Much support in seeing the series through to publication in Malaysia continues
to be provided by Henry Barlow, who also markets the reprint edition and
underwrites the cost of the colour plates. The colour plates were photographed
by Bernard d’Abrera. I am very grateful to my wife, Phillipa, for the
production of camera-ready copy for 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 in, or from, the United States National Museum, Washington, Nationaal
Natuurhistorisch Museum, Leiden, the University Museum, Oxford, 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, to Dr Wolfram Mey of the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, for
searching for Herrich-Schäffer types and to Chey Vun Khen and Jurie Intachat of
the two Malaysian Institutes and to Scott Miller and colleagues in Papua New
Guinea for access to unpublished host records. Such records were also gleaned
from data taken from material submitted to IIE over the years for identification
(see Systematic Account), and from Gaden Robinson’s HOSTS database. Dr Wolfgang Nässig (Senckenberg
Museum, Frankfurt) and Dr Christoph Häuser (Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde,
Stuttgart) kindly provided photographs of types or other material in their care.
Shen-Horn Yen translated into English some Japanese text.
Thanks are also due to Henry Barlow and Ian
Kitching for their critical comments on all or part of the text. The work also
benefited from interactions at various times with Harish Gaonkar (Fabrician type
localities), Nancy Jacobson, Joël Minet and Susan Weller.
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