PSYCHE 
Vol. 76 
March, 1969 
No. 1 
A REVIEW OF THE SPECIES OF SCARITES 
(AN TILL IS CA RIS), (COLEOPTERA: CARABIDAE) 
WITH NOTES ON 
THEIR MORPHOLOGY AND EVOLUTION 
By T. F. H la vac 1 
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University 
Recently, through the courtesy of Prof. R. A. Howard, Director 
of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University, the Museum of 
Comparative Zoology received a shipment of Coleoptera from the 
Luquillo Mountains of Puerto Rico, collected on “W. Peak” by 
R. A. McClain. Included in this material was a single specimen 
of the largest carabid in the Greater Antilles, representing a new 
species of Scarites ( Antilliscaris) , 35 mm in length. This behemoth 
is superficially different from but shares a unique set of characters 
with two known species of the subgenus from the mountains of Puerto 
Rico. The presence in the depauperate Puerto Rican montane cara- 
bid fauna of three species of Scarites raises questions about the ecology 
and evolution of these beetles. These questions have been approached 
through study of the comparative functional morphology of S. (Antil- 
liscaris) and other Scarites subgenera and through preliminary ob- 
servations and experiments on one adult collected during a recent 
trip to Puerto Rico. 
Banninger (1949, p. 146) proposed the subgenus Antilliscaris for 
Scarites darlingtoni Banninger, S. mutchleri Banninger (both orig- 
J I wish to thank Dr. P. J. Darlington, Jr., for suggesting this study, for 
advice and encouragement during its progress and for reading the manu- 
script. I am grateful to Dr. John F. Lawrence for reading the manuscript 
and for many helpful suggestions. Field facilities at the El Yunque Biological 
Station of the University of Puerto Rico were provided through the courtesy 
of Dr. Eric G. Matthews. 
Field work on Puerto Rico was supported by NSF Grant GB 7346 to the 
Committee on Evolutionary Biology of the Department of Biology at Har- 
vard University. 
Published with the aid of a grant from the Museum of Comparative 
Zoology. 
I 
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