A winged relative of ice-crawlers in amber bridges the cryptic extant Xenonomia and a rich fossil record
Yingying Cui , Jérémie Bardin , Benjamin Wipfler , Alexandre Demers-Potvin , Ming Bai , Yi-Jie Tong , Grace Nuoxi Chen , Huarong Chen , Zhen-Ya Zhao , Dong Ren , Olivier Béthoux
Insect Science ›› 2024, Vol. 31 ›› Issue (5) : 1645 -1656.
A winged relative of ice-crawlers in amber bridges the cryptic extant Xenonomia and a rich fossil record
Until the advent of phylogenomics, the atypical morphology of extant representatives of the insect orders Grylloblattodea (ice-crawlers) and Mantophasmatodea (gladiators) had confounding effects on efforts to resolve their placement within Polyneoptera. This recent research has unequivocally shown that these species-poor groups are closely related and form the clade Xenonomia. Nonetheless, divergence dates of these groups remain poorly constrained, and their evolutionary history debated, as the few well-identified fossils, characterized by a suite of morphological features similar to that of extant forms, are comparatively young. Notably, the extant forms of both groups are wingless, whereas most of the pre-Cretaceous insect fossil record is composed of winged insects, which represents a major shortcoming of the taxonomy. Here, we present new specimens embedded in mid-Cretaceous amber from Myanmar and belonging to the recently described species Aristovia daniili. The abundant material and pristine preservation allowed a detailed documentation of the morphology of the species, including critical head features. Combined with a morphological data set encompassing all Polyneoptera, these new data unequivocally demonstrate that A. daniili is a winged stem Grylloblattodea. This discovery demonstrates that winglessness was acquired independently in Grylloblattodea and Mantophasmatodea. Concurrently, wing apomorphic traits shared by the new fossil and earlier fossils demonstrate that a large subset of the former “Protorthoptera” assemblage, representing a third of all known insect species in some Permian localities, are genuine representatives of Xenonomia. Data from the fossil record depict a distinctive evolutionary trajectory, with the group being both highly diverse and abundant during the Permian but experiencing a severe decline from the Triassic onwards.
Grylloblattodea / insect / Mantophasmatodea / Mesozoic / Polyneoptera / relict
2024 Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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