1961] 
Darlington — Australian Carabid Beetles 
7 
Tasmania and on the adjacent mainland of Australia, but that they 
all diminish rapidly northward. 
The transition of selected elements of the flightless geophile carabid 
faunas of tropical and south temperate rain forests is diagrammed in 
Fig. 7 - 
Isolated Australian Faunules 
To return to the five carabid genera discussed above as characteristic 
of the main tropical and subtropical rain forests, these genera have dis- 
tributions that are alike in many details. Within the main (base-of- 
peninsular) tropical rain forest system, they all have almost the same 
northern limits and (excepting perhaps Leiradira ) the same southern 
limits. All are represented on the Eungella Range. In South Queens- 
land, all apparently find their northern limit on Mt. Jacob (except 
that Trichosternus cordatus extends farther north in drier woodland), 
and all extend well into New South Wales, although they reach 
different limits there. They illustrate a general fact, that the carabid 
faunas of the main tropical and subtropical rain forest systems of east- 
ern Australia, although separated by several hundred miles of com- 
paratively dry country, are fundamentally similar, dominated by the 
same tribes, and share many genera some of which coincide remark- 
ably in details of distribution, although some other genera and most 
species are different. However three isolated pieces of Australian rain 
forest have carabid faunules that do not flt into this main pattern. 
They are the tip-of-peninsular and mid-peninsular rain forests of 
Cape York and the rain forest on the Elliot Range south of Towns- 
ville. 
The tip-of-peninsular tract is light rain forest and is limited both 
botanically and zoologically. For example, st’nging trees (Laportea) , 
which occur in other Australian rain forests and in New Guinea, are 
apparently absent in the tip-of-peninsular forest, and land leeches and 
itch mites, which are pests in rain forest elsewhere, are apparently 
absent in the tip-of-peninsular tract. The winged Carabidae of this 
tract are not remarkable, except that they include New Guinean 
species. But the flightless Carabidae form a faunule wholly different 
from that of any other rain forest, consisting (so far as I could find) 
of only two flightless species. One is Mecynognathus dameli Mach, 
an enormous carabid, the largest males 2V2 inches long with mandibles 
like stag beetles. The genus occurs nowhere else on earth, although 
it may be rather closely related to Paranurus (see below). The other 
is a large flightless Clivina (probably kershawi SI.), which is fairly 
common both in the rain forest and in adjacent savannah woodland. 
The nature of this forest and of its flightless Carabidae suggests that 
