S. Mahunka szerk.: Folia Entomologica Hungarica 52. (Budapest, 1992)

passed almost unchanged (except for the weakening of elytral sculpture) into "proto-Guamia". This latter initially spread over vast territories of Oceania, but then - probably outcompeted by later waves of Cyphogastra Deyrolle (C. gloriosa Gestro-group) or of Paracupta Deyrolle - disappeared from almost all this area, so that merely two lineages on the remote peripheries of the former range have persisted to the present times. The progenitor of the "northern" lineage, in which all (except the suturai one) denticles of the apical region of elytra disappeared and the antennae became dark, reached the Marianne Islands, where it subsequently split into two modern species: C. auripennis Saunders assumed more coppery-red colouration of the elytra, but otherwise remained almost unchanged, whereas in C. longueti Théry the elytral sculpture became still finer, apices longer, more acute, and slightly caudate, the colouration of tarsi altered to brownish-black, and that of the apical part of abdomen to non-metallic yellow. Evolutionary processes in the "eastern" lineage resulted in broadening of the pronotal foveae, development of densely and finely punctulated spaces on their bottom, and expansion of the coppery-red colouration of the ventral side in the forefather of the Marquesan forms. I am unable to find any feature of C. bedoci Théry, not likely to have been present in that ancient "proto-Marquesan" as well, while C. obsoleta Holynski evolved from it by smoothing out the sculpture of dorsal side, changing its lustre to oily, further broadening of pronotal foveae and finely punctured areas in them, and assuming still more regularly rounded shape of the elytra, with still more acute apical angles. Diagrammatic summary of the evolution of Guamia Théry as hypothesized above is shown in Fig. 3. I am, of course, fully aware of the speculative nature of these reconstobsoleta longueti Cyphogastra s.str. Prolo-Cyphogastra auripennis Prot o-Guamia bedoci Pleiona Paracupta Fig. 3. - Phylogenctic relations in the subgenus Guamia Théry