The
type species Propleopus oscillans was first named under the genus
Triclis by
Charles Walter De Vis in 1888. Because the German entomologist
Hermann Loew had
already named the genus
Triclis for a
robber fly in 1851,
Albert Heber Longman named a replacement name
Propleopus in 1924, combining the prefix
pró (πρό, 'before') with
pleopus, the latter in reference to the junior synonym of
Hypsiprymnodon moschatus:
Pleopus nudicaudatus named by
Richard Owen in 1877. In 1978 and 1985, Archer and colleagues named two more species,
P. chillagoensis and
P. wellingtonensis, and provided a taxonomic revision of the genus. ==Description==