TRECI-IOBLEMUS IN NORTH AMERICA, WITH 
A KEY TO NORTH AMERICAN GENERA 
OF TRECHINAE (COLEOPTERA: CARABIDAE) 
By Thomas C. Barr, Jr. 
The University of Kentucky, Lexington 
Trechoblemus Ganglbauer is a genus of trechine beetles (Tre- 
chinae: Trechini: Trechina) previously known only from Europe 
and Asia. It formed the type genus of Jeannel’s “Serie phyletique 
de Trechoblemus T and is generally regarded as closely related to 
cavernicolous trechines in Japan, the Carpathians and Transylvanian 
Alps of eastern Europe, and eastern United States (Barr, 1969; 
Jeannel, 1928, 1962; Ueno and Yoshida, 1966). The large cave 
beetle genus Pseudanophthalmus Jeannel, with approximately 175 
species in caves of ten eastern States, the monobasic genus Nea- 
phaenops Jeannel, from Kentucky caves, and the dibasic genus 
N ebonites Valentine, from Tennessee and Kentucky, are part of 
the Trechoblemus complex. 
The apparent restriction of Trechoblemus to Eurasia led previous 
investigators to conclude that, with respect to the richly diverse 
trechine fauna in caves of eastern United States, “there are no im- 
mediate, ancestral genera now present in North America” (Barr, 
1969, p. 83). Although there is at least one edaphobitic (obligate 
in soil) species of American Pseudanophthalmus known (P. sylvaticus 
Barr, 1967), in the mountains of West Virginia, it has already 
lost eyes, wings, and pigment, and merely indicates that many of 
the “regressive” evolutionary changes in ancestral Pseudanophthal- 
mus may have taken place in the soil or deep humus before the 
beetles became restricted to caves. Most of the species of Pseuda- 
nophthalmus from eastern Europe (Barr, 1964) are also eyeless 
edaphobites. 
In March, 1971, I received a series of 5 trechines for determina- 
tion from Dr. Richard L. Westcott, State Department of Agri- 
culture, Salem, Oregon. These specimens were all taken in black 
light traps in the Willamette valley between Salem and Portland, 
northwest Oregon, and proved to belong to an undescribed species 
of Trechoblemus , the first species of the genus to be discovered in 
North America. 
There are at least two other zoogeographic links between the 
forests of the Pacific Northwest and those of the southern Appala- 
chians, when one looks at the carabid faunas as a whole. The 
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