Introduction

The. genus Pachyrhamma Brunner, which contains the largest New Zealand members of the subfamily Macropathinae, is well represented in caves and tunnels throughout the country. Two new species belonging to this genus have recently been discovered in gold-mine tunnels near Thames Only one of these species has previously been collected. These two species show a very close relationship with other members of the same genus in the northern part of the North Island, particularly in their strongly marked sexual dimorphism.

In 1880, and again in 1891, Reischek collected several specimens of a species of Rhaphidophorid occurring in tunnels at Coromandel. This material, consisting of six males, two females and six nymphs, was sent to Europe and housed in the Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna, as part of Brunner von Wattenwyl's Collection. In 1930, Karny revised Brunner's Collection and placed Reischek's specimens in Hutton's species Pleioplectron cavernae. He illustrated his remarks on P. cavernae with a line drawing of an adult male collected by Reischek.

Hutton's species Pleioplectron cavernae was described from four males and two females collected from a small cave near Karapiti fumarole, Taupo. Unfortunately, most of this material has been lost, an immature and badly damaged male and female in the British Museum (Nat. Hist.) Collection being all that remain. When he described Pleioplectron cavernae, Hutton (1900) synonymised Pachyrhamma edwardsii (Scudder) with it. As P. edwardsii had been the type species for the genus Pachyrhamma, Hutton designated P. fascifer (= novae-zealandiae) as the new type species for the genus.

The author has been able to study the type material of Pachyrhamma edwardsii (Scudder) from the Geneva Museum. An examination of this material confirms the conclusion reached by the author from a comparison of written descriptions with type material of Macropathus filifer Walker (Richards, 1954, 1958) that P. edwardsii (Scudder) is a synonym of M. filifer P. fascifer remains the type species for the genus Pachyrhamma.

Through the courtesy of Dr. D. R. Ragge, of the British Museum (Nat. Hist.) the remaining two specimens of Hutton's original series of Pleioplectron cavernae have been examined by the author. M. filifer Walker is generally very different from P. cavernae Hutton.

The author has also been able to examine a pair of the insects collected by Reischek from Coromandel in 1891, and labelled by Karny as Pleioplectron cavernae Hutton. These specimens are much larger than both M. filifer Walker and P. cavernae Hutton, and are markedly different.

In 1958, the author was fortunate to collect twenty-one specimens of the same species as Reischek from gold-mine tunnels near Thames. This is considered to be a new species and in no way related to Pleioplectron cavernae. Thus Karny's determination is incorrect.

The species is described as follows: