Publication Date:
2009-11-07
Description:
The head and mouthpart structures of 11 species of Eurasian scorpionflies represent three extinct and closely related families during a 62-million-year interval from the late Middle Jurassic to the late Early Cretaceous. These taxa had elongate, siphonate (tubular) proboscides and fed on ovular secretions of extinct gymnosperms. Five potential ovulate host-plant taxa co-occur with these insects: a seed fern, conifer, ginkgoopsid, pentoxylalean, and gnetalean. The presence of scorpionfly taxa suggests that siphonate proboscides fed on gymnosperm pollination drops and likely engaged in pollination mutualisms with gymnosperms during the mid-Mesozoic, long before the similar and independent coevolution of nectar-feeding flies, moths, and beetles on angiosperms. All three scorpionfly families became extinct during the later Early Cretaceous, coincident with global gymnosperm-to-angiosperm turnover.〈br /〉〈br /〉〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2944650/" target="_blank"〉〈img src="https://static.pubmed.gov/portal/portal3rc.fcgi/4089621/img/3977009" border="0"〉〈/a〉 〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2944650/" target="_blank"〉This paper as free author manuscript - peer-reviewed and accepted for publication〈/a〉〈br /〉〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Ren, Dong -- Labandeira, Conrad C -- Santiago-Blay, Jorge A -- Rasnitsyn, Alexandr -- Shih, ChungKun -- Bashkuev, Alexei -- Logan, M Amelia V -- Hotton, Carol L -- Dilcher, David -- Z99 LM999999/Intramural NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2009 Nov 6;326(5954):840-7. doi: 10.1126/science.1178338.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉College of Life Sciences, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100048, China.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19892981" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Asia
;
*Biological Evolution
;
Extinction, Biological
;
Feeding Behavior
;
*Fossils
;
Gymnosperms/anatomy & histology/classification/*physiology
;
Head/anatomy & histology
;
Insects/*anatomy & histology/chemistry/classification/*physiology
;
Mouth/anatomy & histology
;
*Pollination
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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