Mecyclothorax kavanaughi sp. n. (Coleoptera: Carabidae) from the Finisterre Range, Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Mecyclothorax Sharp, 1903 comprises species distributed across Australia, New Guinea, Java, Borneo, St. Paul’s and Amsterdam Islands, Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands, New Caledonia, and the Society and Hawaiian Islands (Baehr 2008, Liebherr 2008). Though the Society Islands’ and Hawaiian Islands’ radiations are most diverse, with 67 species described from the former (Perrault 1992) and 125 from the latter (Britton 1948, Liebherr 2005, 2006, 2008), the greatest morphological disparity and greatest number of generalized species, characterized by macroptery, occur in Australia (Moore 1984). As presently constituted, Mecyclothorax contains the bulk of the species comprising the tribe Mecyclothoracini; part of the subfamily Psydrinae as classified by Moore (1963). Knowledge of the New Guinea Mecyclothorax fauna has been developed by sequential descriptions of species, often known from only single specimens, with each species known from only single or nearby localities (summarized in Baehr 2008). This highly allopatric, indeed disjunct array of species localities is consistent with our extremely incomplete knowledge of the New Guinea fauna. In this paper I describe a species discovered in the Finisterre Range, Papua New Guinea by D. H. Kavanaugh, California Academy of Sciences. This species’ adelphotaxon is distributed far away on Puncak Trikora, Papua, Indonesia. Criteria supporting the recognition of the Finisterre Range as a distinct area of endemism are reviewed, with the geological history of this portion of New Guinea used to establish an age of origin for the clade comprising the new species and its adelphotaxon, M. toxopei Darlington.