1961] 
Darlington — Australian Carabid Beetles 
1 1 
genera Clivina, Tachys, Lesticus , Tlatycoelus , and Loxandrus have 
undergone wing atrophy at low altitudes in New Guinea (Darlington 
in press) , but they have evidently done it recently, in situ. Some of the 
species are still dimorphic, with fully winged individuals occurring 
with the short winged ones, and all the short winged lowland species 
are closely related to long winged ones that still exist in New Guinea. 
It is only above about 5000 ft. in the mountains that flightless Carabi- 
dae become numerous in New Guinea, and they too have apparently 
undergone wing atrophy in situ. That is, they have been derived on 
the mountains of New Guinea from winged ancestors, and do not 
represent flightless stocks of other regions. This is my conclusion after 
making formal studies of the New Guinean representatives of the two 
principal tribes concerned, the Agonini (Darlington 1952, especially 
table p. 108) and Pterostichini (in press). 
Besides the change of specific flightless stocks from New Guinea to 
Australia there is a change of dominance of tribes. In New Guinea, 
Agonini are much more numerous than Pterostichini, and most flight- 
less Carabidae of the island are agonines. But in Australia, even in 
the tropical rain forest, Pterostichini are overwhelmingly dominant 
and include most of the flightless forms. This striking shift of domi- 
nance is further discussed on page 22. 
The first important finding of the present study, then, is that, al- 
though the rain forests of New’ Guinea and tropical Australia are 
similar and share many species of plants, mammals, birds, and winged 
insects including many winged Carabidae, they have wholly different 
faunas of flightless Carabidae, which differ not only in taxonomic 
details but also in general ecology (in relation to altitude), in origin 
of the flightless stocks, and in relative dominance of tribes. 
Transition in Australia: South from the Tropics 
Now to be considered is the transition of wet forest carabid faunas 
within the limits of Australia and Tasmania. 
Five important genera of flightless geophile Carabidae are mentioned 
above as occurring in rain forest on the Atherton Tableland. Of 
these five genera, Notonomus is most dominant. It is a genus of about 
100 species, confined to eastern and southeastern Australia and Tas- 
mania except for one species isolated in southwestern Australia. The 
genus’ northern limit is between Daintree and Cooktown. It is repre- 
sented by several species (some very localized) in the main tropical 
rain forest system of North Queensland, where it seems to be confined 
to rain forest. It is well represented in the subtropical rain forests of 
South Queensland and northern New South Wales and south through 
