Rivellia have distinctive wing venation and markings. For most species the M vein characteristically ‘dips’ into the discal vein before the inner crossvein, and typically they are marked with at least two transverse markings, these lying on the inner and outer wing crossveins, and an apical mark. The only described Australian species that lacks the bands on the crossveins is R. connata. For a figure showing these characters click here.
Currently there are 7 described Rivellia species listed for Australia, with at least two of those species, R. bipars (Walker 1861) and R. mentissa (Walker 1841) being poorly understood and may have been described later under new names. There has not been a modern revision of this genus for Australia with McAlpine (1973) listing around 23 undescribed species. The most recent works on this fauna are that of Hendel (1914) and Malloch (1930). The following species groupings are based largely on the latter two papers which utilised differences in wing markings to separate species.
