Rhytisternus Chaudoir, 1865

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 : 427

Rhytisternus Chaudoir, 1865

Rhytisternus Chaudoir, 1865 : Essai sur les Féronides de l’Australie et de la Nouvelle-Zélande: 106. Type species: Feronia (Rhytisterna) liopleura Chaudoir, 1865 , by subsequent designation (Britton, 1940).

Diagnosis. Medium-sized to rather large species (in Pterostichini ), characterized by bifid mental tooth, transversely striolate proepipleura, absence of the scutellary stria but presence of the scutellary pore on the elytra, usually incomplete striation of the elytra, absence of discal punctures and setae on the 3rd interval, and not transversely sulcate abdominal sterna. The latter character distinguishes the genus from the New Guinean genus Rhytiferonia Darlington, 1962 , that likewise possesses transversely striolate proepipleura.

The genus Rhytisternus presently includes 24 described species that are distributed through the whole of Australia, but have not been recorded elsewhere (Moore et al., 1985, Lorenz, 2005). The genus has not been recently revised, therefore the actual number of species may be considerably larger. Several species of Rhytisternus occur in the Northern Territory of Australia opposite the island of Timor. The genus is characterized by presence of several transverse strioles on the proepisternum, a character that is similarly present only in the New Guinean genus Rhytiferonia Darlington, 1962 which, however, probably is not very closely related to Rhytisternus Chaudoir ( Darlington, 1962) (see discussion below).

In Australia, most species of Rhytisternus have been sampled near water, at river banks and at or near the shores of lakes and lagoons, preferably if these are grown with some vegetation. The single species described in the present paper was collected in dwarf Eucalyptus woodland with grass and moss at high altitudes.