In the early days of dipteran taxonomy, the family Drosophilidae received very little attention. The small size of the flies and their rather conservative form did not serve as a good attractant for either general collectors or serious systematists. Accordingly, when Drosophila melanogaster burst upon the world early in this century as the paramount object for research in genetics, the systematic and evolutionary biology of the family to which it belongs was virtually unknown. Indeed, it fell to one of the founders of modern genetics, Alfred H. Sturtevant, who was also a gifted entomologist, to assemble a pioneering monograph, “The North American Species of Drosophila” (1921).