New taxa of Dolichoctis Schmidt-Goebel and Paradolichoctis Baehr from the Australian-Papuan Region (Coleoptera: Carabidae: Lebiinae)

Abstract

According to the catalogue of Australian Carabid beetles (Moore et al.1987) three species of the large Indo-Australian genus Dolichoctis Schmidt-Goebel, 1846 occur in Australia: the widespread D. striata Schmidt-Goebel, 1846 of the nominate subgenus that is mainly characterized by unarmed and usually spotted elytra, and D. aculeata Chaudoir, 1869 and D. subrotunda Darlington, 1968, subgenus Spinidolichoctis Baehr, 1999 which occurs only in the Papuan Subregion and is characterized by the dentate or spinose apex of the elytra and usually uniformly black colour. Whereas the first two species were recorded from Iron Range in mid Cape York Peninsula, northern Queensland, Moore did not give any Australian locality record for D. subrotunda. Both, D. aculeata and D. subrotunda are common in New Guinea, and D. aculeata occurs also on Sulawesi, the Moluccas, New Britain, and New Ireland (Baehr 1999). D. striata certainly is the most widespread species of the genus and is said to occur throughout the whole range of the genus, which extends from India and Nepal in the northwest, through the whole of tropical Asia to Japan in the east, and in the south through the Indonesian and Philippine insular belts to New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, Solomon Islands, and northeastern Australia. However, the taxonomic status of many populations of D. striata is not yet settled and so a comparative examination of the whole complex is currently carried out. It seems that the Australian “D. striata” are different from those from mainland Asia, and that the whole complex consists of several different taxa. Moreover, most populations which usually are referred as “D. striata” probably do not belong to this species, because in most previous comprehensive papers the real D. striata seems to have been confounded with other species. The species of the genus Dolichoctis occurring in the Papuan Subregion have been revised first by Darlington (1968) in his monumental treatment of the Carabidae of New Guinea, then by the author (Baehr 1999, 2003a, b, 2006). At present 44 taxa are recorded from this area, most of these occurring in New Guinea (see checklist in Baehr 2006). In the course of my work on the Papuan species of New taxa of Dolichoctis Schmidt-Goebel and Paradolichoctis Baehr from the Australian-Papuan Region (Coleoptera: Carabidae: Lebiinae)