A survey of Australian Jurassic plant fossil assemblages reveals examples of foliar and wood damage generated by terrestrial arthropods attributed to leaf-margin feeding, surface feeding, lamina hole feeding, galling, piercingand-sucking, leaf-mining, boring and oviposition. These types of damage are spread across a wide range of fern and gymnosperm taxa, but are particularly well represented on derived gymnosperm clades, such as Pentoxylales and Bennettitales. Several Australian Jurassic plants show morphological adaptations in the form of minute marginal and apical spines on leaves and bracts, and scales on rachises that likely represent physical defences against arthropod herbivory. Only two entomofaunal assemblages are presently known from the Australian Jurassic but these reveal a moderate range of taxa, particularly among the Orthoptera, Coleoptera, Hemiptera and Odonata, all of which are candidates for the dominant feeding traits evidenced by the fossil leaf and axis damage. The survey reveals that plant-arthropod interactions in the Jurassic at middle to high southern latitudes of southeastern Gondwana incorporated a similar diversity of feeding strategies to those represented in coeval communities from other provinces. Further, the range of arthropod damage types is similar between Late Triassic and Jurassic assemblages from Gondwana despite substantial differences in the major plant taxa, implying that terrestrial invertebrate herbivores were able to successfully transfer to alternative plant hosts during the floristic turnovers at the Triassic-Jurassic transition.
The first two rove beetle fossils discovered from the Late Jurassic Talbragar Fish Bed in New South Wales, Australia are described and illustrated. Juroglypholoma talbragarense n. sp. is the second fossil record for one of the smallest and latest recognized staphylinid subfamily Glypholomatinae. The other staphylinid, Protachinus minor n. gen. n. sp., is an unusual member of extant subfamily Tachyporinae (tribe Tachyporini). It significantly retains several distinct features, including entire epistomal suture, and abdominal tergites III–VI each with a pair of basolateral ridges. The discovery of a new glypholomatine in Australia, together with recently reported one from the Middle Jurassic Daohugou biota of China, suggests the subfamily Glypholomatinae was probably much more widespread in the Jurassic than previously thought.
BackgroundThe systematic positions of the extinct insect orders Hypoperlida, Miomoptera and Permopsocida were enigmatic and unstable for nearly a century. The recent studies based on new material, especially from the Cenomanian Burmese amber, shed light on evolutionary history of Acercaria resolving Permopsocida as the stem group of Condylognatha. However, the knowledge of the remaining two orders differs significantly.ResultsIn this study, we describe new specimens and evaluate morphology of various structures with emphasis on the mouthparts and wing venation. Our results are primary based on revisions of the type specimens with a proper delimitation of taxa Hypoperlida and Miomoptera followed by their significance for the evolutionary history of Acercaria. Three new genera as Belmomantis gen. nov., Elmomantis gen. nov., and Mazonopsocus gen. nov. are designated as members of Palaeomanteidae. The Pennsylvanian Mazonopsocus provides a minimum age for calibration, in accordance to the presence of crown acercarians during the late Carboniferous.ConclusionsThis contribution demonstrates that Hypoperlida and Miomoptera are stem groups of Acercaria. The putative clade (Hypoperlida + Miomoptera) is appearing as potential sister group of (Psocodea + (Permopsocida + (Thripida + Hemiptera))).Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-017-1039-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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