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

lorous or contrastingly blue); underside seems to have been always metallic (green, golden, or coppery). It had apparently been distributed all-over New Guinea, until the emergence of the New Guineán Mountains separated the northern populations from those inhabiting the southern part of the area. To the north of Central Range, bottom surfaces within the pronotal foveae grew broad and the colouration of the body became invariably green this form gave rise to the Mniszechi and Gloriosa circles, now widely distributed between Celebes and Samoa. On the south, elytral punctulation declining towards apex, ventrally green variant almost disappeared, and the elytral suture got standardized as contrastingly blue in non-black individuals. This was already unmistakable representative of the Suturalis - circle - indeed, it is difficult to find any feature to distinguish between so reconstructed ancestor from the modern C. suturalis (Fabricius) s.str.! Expansion to the west and east resulted in its distribution over the vast area between Moluques and New Hebrides. The invasion of the Gloriosa - circle to the Solomon Islands caused, as it seems, buth the extinction of "proto-suturalis" from there and, consequently, the isolation of the New Hebridean population, which have evolved into big, black above and coppery-red below, very distinctive by its extremely developed abdominal plaque, "zoogeographical relict" C. tuberculata Thomson. The evolution of the "mainland" New Guineán populations led - through broadening of the distinctive bottom areas in the pronctal foveae, development of distinctly "caudate" shape of elytra, disappearance of black morphs and of those with blue elytral suture, darkening of the pronotum, etc. - to the Albertisi - circle. On the Buruan Archipelago the elytral colouration got fixed as black with a bronzed latero-preapical band, that of the undersurface as green, and the pronotum became bright blue, giving rise to C.nigripennis Deyrolle. At an initial stage of its evolution, this lineage sent an offshoot to the south, which - developing strongly caudate elytra, prominent anterior angles of the pronotum, greenish diffuse patches on elytral sides, etc. became - the ancestor of the Javanica - circle. The phylogenetical reconstructions outlined above, highly speculative as they are, seem nevertheless much more parsimonious than any alternative I can think of. Now, however, we find ourselves left with the Moluccan "core" of the "proto-suturalis" - the essentially unchanged remnant of the common ancestor of the Suturalis - circle - further evolution of which can be conceived on various ways, none being much more likely than the others. For some rather vague reasons I prefer the following scenario, involving two isolationevents and a reinvasion. At first, the Northern Moluccan (Halmahera and adjacent islands) population developed the distinctive features of C. s. ignicauda Deyrolle (uniformly punctured proepisterna, distinctive bottom areas in pronotal foveae, dark tarsi), while that of the southern islands (Ceram, Amboina, etc.) remained without detectable changes as C. suturalis s.str. Then, a small deme of the northern subspecies on one of the islets (Batjan? Ternate?) evolved further - dark dorsal colouration got fixed (founder effect?) and changed from bluish- to brownish-black, undersurface became also blackish, bottom surfaces in the pronotal foveae grew still broader - to make C. carbonaria Théry. At last, the latter - being reproductively isolated from both races of C. suturalis (Fabricius) - reinvaded the areas occupied by them. The evolutionary history of the Suturalis circle - as reconstructed above - is shown graphically in Fig. 1 (the length of the lines connecting each form with its ancestor is intended to reflect approximately the degree of differentiation).