The Geographical Distribution of Animals; with a Study of the Relations of Living and Extinct Faunas As Elucidating the Past Changes of the Earth's Su

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General Books, 2013 - 154 pages
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876 edition. Excerpt: ... Acherusia has 2 species in Brazil, 1 in Australia. These resemblances may probably have arisen from intercommunication during the warm southern period, when floating timber would occasionally transmit a few larvte of this family from island to island across the antarctic seas. When the cold period returned, they would spread northward, and become more or less modified under the new physical conditions and organic competition, to which they were subjected. We now come to the very important group of Longicorns, in which the Australian region as a whole, is very rich, possessing 860 genera, of which 263 are peculiar to it. Of these about 50 are confined to the Austro-Malay Islands, 12 to New Zealand, and the remainder to Australia proper with Tasmania. Of the genera confined to, or highly characteristic of Australia, the following are the most important: --Cnemoplitcs, belonging to the Prionidse; Phoracantha, to the Cerambycidse; Zygocera, Hebeccrus, Symphyletes, and Rhytidophora, to the Lamiidse. Confined to the Austro-Malay Islands are Tethionea (Cerambycidse): Imesisternus, Arrhenotus, Micracantha, and Sybra (Lamiidse); but there are also such Malayan genera as Batocera Gnoma, Praonetha, and Sphenura, which are very abundant in the Austro-Malay sub-region. A species of each of the Australian genera, Zygocera, Syllitus, and Pseudocephalus, is said to occur in Chili, and one of the tropical American genus, Hammatochcerus, in tropical Australia; an amount of resemblance which, as in the case of the Buprestidte, may be imputed to trans-oceanic migration during the Southern warm period. This concludes our illustrations of the distribution of some of the more important groups of Australian insects; and it will be admitted that we have not met..

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