AUSTRALIAN CARABID BEETLES XI. 
SOME TACHYS 1 
By P. J. Darlington, Jr. 
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge, Mass. 
The preceding part of this series (Darlington 1962) dealt with the 
Australian species of Bembidion. The present part deals with some 
smaller Bembidiini of the genus Tacky s. Australian Tachys have been 
treated twice by Sloane (1896; 1921), whose papers should be con- 
sulted for references and synonymy. I shall now consider only selected 
groups of the genus about which I have something new to say. 
Australian species of Tachys are much more numerous and less well 
known than those of Bembidion. They are phylogenetically diverse as 
well as numerous and include several peculiar groups which may be 
relict, or specialized. For example Tachys amplipennis Macleay has 
the elytron fully striate with grooved striae and seems to lack the 
apical striole that characterizes most Tachys. However the apex of 
the 7th stria is deeply impressed, with a puncture beside it on the inner 
side, and this part of the 7th stria is almost separated from the main 
part of the stria in some individuals. This condition may be primitive 
and may show how the apical striole originated. However, some other 
Tachys have the apical striole attached to the 3rd stria (see Tachys 
ectromioides group in the following pages, and also Tachys yarrensis 
Blackburn, which will be treated in the next paper of this series) . 
Species of Tachys are numerous, diverse, and frequently collected 
almost everywhere on the continent of Australia, including Victoria, 
but are comparatively few in Tasmania. Sloane (1920, 15 1) records 
only four, well known Australian species from the island. In four 
months’ collecting on Tasmania I encountered Tachys on only three 
occasions: once in stone and gravel banks and bars of the King River 
at the crossing of the Queenstown road, where I found T . ( (< Bembi- 
dion” ) hobarti Blackburn and a related new species; once on the bank 
of the Mersey River, where I took one hobarti by washing gravel; and 
once beside the Arve River in southern Tasmania, where I found one 
specimen of T. australis Schaum under a stone. 
The distribution of Tachys in Tasmania and southern Australia 
Published with a grant from the Museum of Comparative Zoology at 
Harvard College. 
Manuscript received by the editor March 19, 1962. 
