Arhytinus Bates, 1889

Baehr, Martin & Reid, Chris A. M., 2017, On a Collection of Carabidae from Timor Leste, with Descriptions of Nine New Species (Insecta: Coleoptera, Carabidae), Records of the Australian Museum 69 (6), pp. 421-450 : 430

Arhytinus Bates, 1889

Arhytinus Bates, 1889 : Contributions a la faune Indo- Chinoise. 3 e Mémoir. Carabidae . Annales de la Société de France (6) 9: 278. Type species: Arhytinus bembidioides Bates, 1889 , by monotypy.

Diagnosis. Medium-sized to very small species (in tribe), characterized by short and wide body shape; absence of the mental tooth; cordiform prothorax; short and wide, ovalshaped and posteriad widened elytra with well impressed and commonly distinctly punctate or crenulate striae and usually rather iridescent surface due to superficial microreticulation of verY fine, transverse lines. CommonlY the 3rd interval is asetose, rarely unisetose. Even when the external characters are remarkably similar throughout the genus, the male aedeagus is quite differentlY shaped and structured and maY or may not bear a bidenticulate apex, and commonly it bears one or several strongly scerotized teeth, or spines, or spinose plates, of different size and shape in the apical part of the (inverted) internal sac.

The genus Arhytinus presently includes 50 described species that are distributed from southern India through Nepal, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, southern and central China, Taiwan, the Philippine and Indonesian Archipelagos including Sulawesi and the Moluccas, to New Guinea and surrounding Islands of the Bismarck Archipelago, but it is not yet known from Australia. The genus has been recently revised ( Baehr, 2010a), but since the revision several additional species have been described from various countries (Baehr & Schmidt, 2010; Baehr, 2012a, 2014a,b).

Apart from very few species, specimens of Arhytinus are extremely rare in collections, and of many species only the holotype is known, or the species are only recorded from a single locality. The reasons for this apparent rarity are unknown, although they may be rather due to inadequate sampling methods and efforts than to the raritY of specimens in nature. Similarly, of the new species described here, only the holotype is available.

The single species described in the present paper was collected at light in eucalypt forest with weeds near a gorge, at median altitude.