New Zealand Cyrtidae — PARAMONOV 
closely related genus, is present. 
The genus Oncodes is cosmopolitan, but 
none of the species has been found to occur 
both in Australia and New Zealand. 
Thus the information we haie on the New 
Zealand Cyrtidae would indicate a closer re- 
lationship, with respect to their origins, be- 
tween the New Zealand and American fauna 
than between the New Zealand and Aus- 
tralian. 
Let us now examine the general features of 
the dipterous fauna of New Zealand. First 
the absence, or extremely poor representation, 
of some families must be recorded: Neme- 
strinidae , Apioceridae , Scenopinidae , Mydaidae , 
Conopidae are quite absent; some large families, 
such as Bombyliidae , Leptidae , are represented 
by one species each. What is the cause of this 
absence? It is quite evident that all these and 
similar elements of the fauna were present in 
New Zealand in different geological periods. 
During its geological history New Zealand 
has been repeatedly covered by the sea, but 
since mesosoic time it has been definitely 
above the sea and part of a large continent, 
which was situated mainly westwards of the 
present position of New Zealand. Australia 
is also a part of this earlier continent. 
In Trias-Jura time New Zealand was more 
extensive, reaching to New Caledonia or even 
farther northwards, eastwards reaching the 
Chatham Islands and southwards to the 
Campbell Islands. 
The main ranges of mountains were created 
during the Pliocene. The uplift was continued 
in the Pleistocene. This was the time of the 
greatest glaciation. The end of the Pleistocene 
was a time of subsidence when the sea covered 
the sea-shore zone to a height of 40-150 
meters above present sea level. This subsidence 
changed to slow uprising which has continued. 
Thus New Zealand has been connected 
with land-masses which have representatives 
of the above mentioned families in great num- 
ber, and such families were destroyed during 
the process of New Zealand’s isolation. 
17 
The causes of this destruction were various: 
1) some elements adapted to the arid area 
conditions were eliminated by the absence in 
New Zealand of deserts and by very high 
humidity, 2) some elements were destroyed 
by the glaciation, which was not very intense, 
but which changed fundamentally the ecolo- 
gical conditions. 
When the author was writing his Review of 
Australian Apioceridae (Paramonov, 1953), he 
was restricted by the scope of the theme and 
could not discuss the problem of the absence 
of the family in New Zealand; now it will be 
useful to express his ideas in a more extensive 
form. 
If we accept the destruction of apiocerids 
by glaciation, we must examine theoretically 
the three following alternatives. 
1. A large continent (for example, Australia 
or South America) is undergoing glaciation. 
Will the result of glaciation be the destruc- 
tion of the fauna of the continent? Most 
probably not, because the continent extends 
from north to south for a very great distance. 
We cannot suppose glaciation to cover the 
whole continent. On one or the other end 
of it there will exist much more mild climatic 
conditions, which will permit the existence of 
the different elements of the fauna. Such 
glaciation cannot wipe out the fauna — the 
animals will only migrate to the warmer areas 
or strips of land or "pockets.” 
If we suppose the whole of the state of 
Victoria, from the Kosciusco summit to sea 
level to be covered with snow and ice, we 
can be sure that in the area of Cape York 
there will be areas serving as "refugiums” for 
the different elements of the fauna. Never will 
the fauna be completely extinct. After the end 
of glaciation the animals will migrate back 
into Victoria. The glaciation can cause max- 
imally only the impoverishment of the fauna 
and temporarily the change of its spatial dis- 
tribution. 
2. We will have a quite different picture if 
the glaciation covers a not very large island 
