PSYCHE 
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Vol. 63 March, 1956 No. 1 
AUSTRALIAN CARABID BEETLES III. 
NOTES ON THE AGONINI 1 
By P. J. Darlington, Jr. 
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge, Mass. 
One of the interesting things in the geography of cara- 
bid beetles is that certain dominant groups of them have 
complementary distributions. For example, among small, 
ground-living but non-fossorial Carabidae, the great genus 
Tachys is dominant in the tropics but diminishes north- 
ward and southward; and it is largely replaced in the 
north-temperate zone and to some extent in some south- 
temperate areas by another great, related genus, Bembi- 
dion, which is very poorly represented in the tropics ( cf . 
Darlington, Coleopterists’ Bulletin Vol. 7, No. 2, 1953, pp. 
12-16). 
Two other tribes of larger Carabidae which have some- 
what complementary distributions are the Pterostichini 
and Agonini. These tribes are only partly and very com- 
plexly complementary. Both are in fact cosmopolitan, but 
unevenly so. In some places, they occur in nearly equal 
numbers; in other places, Pterostichini are overwhelmingly 
dominant; and in others, Agonini are so. 
These tribes tend to be complementary within the Aus- 
tralian region. In Australia itself and Tasmania Ptero- 
stichini are dominant, with more than 350 known species 
against only about 20 species of Agonini in the same area. 
But in New Guinea Agonini are dominant, with 107 known 
full species and 14 additional geographical subspecies 
Published with a grant from the Museum of Comparative Zoology 
at Harvard College. 
1 
OC T 9 9 1956 
