Abstract
Locating ground beetles in tropical regions is usually a frustrating experience for any but the experienced collector. Often, even the experienced have their problems. After seven years of tropical investigations, I found that the answer to the apparent rarity of these beetles in the tropics is due to patchy microdistribution, not lack of species or individuals. The observations, analysis, and explanation of this phenomenon became the cornerstone of this paper. Ancillary data gathered while collecting and observing behavior of carabids plus distributional and structural data of elements of the entire family led to the general evolutionary hypotheses presented here.
“The expectations of theory color perception to such a degree that new notions seldom arise from facts collected under the influence of old pictures of the world. New pictures must cast their influence before facts can be seen in different perspective.”
—Eldredge and Gould, 1972
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Erwin, T.L. (1979). Thoughts on the Evolutionary History of Ground Beetles: Hypotheses Generated from Comparative Faunal Analyses of Lowland Forest Sites in Temperate and Tropical Regions. In: Erwin, T.L., Ball, G.E., Whitehead, D.R., Halpern, A.L. (eds) Carabid Beetles. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9628-1_30
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9628-1_30
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