1978] Peek — Adelopsis in the Southern Appalachians 377 
sagital plane. This condition was judged to be a form from which all 
other aedeagal tips could be derived. He also saw this genus as 
ancestral to Ptomaphagus, which developed a more “successful and 
harmonious” and less variable aedeagal type, and then spread 
through North America, and across the proto- Atlantic to Europe in 
the Eocene. He also saw an earlier connection from South America 
in the Jurassic to southeast Asia, where another derivative genus, 
Ptomaphaginus, now occurs. Szymczakowski (1964, 1969) agrees 
with the idea of an American evolutionary origin, but sees little 
evidence to support arguments for specific despersal routes. The 
survival of Proptomaphaginus in relictual species in the Caribbean 
and Mexico supports the idea of an American origin for the stock 
that became Ptomaphaginus in the Oriental Region. 
I do not yet have a suitable overview of the genus as a whole to 
elaborate on or offer alternative hypotheses to those of Jeannel and 
Szymczakowski. This is best postponed until after my now massive 
tropical American collections are studied. However, some ideas can 
be proposed for the collection of species limited to the southeastern 
United States. 
The genus probably originated in tropical America in the late 
Mesozoic. Whether this was in what we now know as South, 
Central or North America probably cannot be known with certainty. 
However, the greatest present generic diversity in the tribe is now 
known to be in or adjacent to Mexico. This area (and Central 
America) has been an important evolutionary center in its own 
right. Savage (1966) suggested that broad, terrestrial, forested 
connections united these three regions in the Paleocene and per- 
mitted north-south faunal movements, so that mesic tropical cli- 
mates and forests were continuous through South America up to 
what is now the central United States. The patterns of distribution 
of forest litter reptiles and amphibians may be informative and 
related because they occupy environments similar to Catopinae, 
though their dispersal abilities are probably very different. How- 
ever, Savage (1974) has reconsidered the evidence and now finds less 
substantial support for such broad connections, and now thinks 
there was a significant water gap separating South America from 
“nuclear Central America” and North America from the Cretaceous 
up to the Pliocene. This is more consistent with other current ideas 
of plate tectonic biogeography (Raven and Axelrod, 1975). This 
gap, however, could have been crossed by island hopping and waif 
