New angarosphecid wasp (Hymenoptera: Apoidea, Angarosphecidae) from the mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber

Zheng, Yan; Zhang, Haichun; Rasnitsyn, Alexandr P.

doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2020.104742

Cited by 4 publications

(20 citation statements)

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“…Note that our analyses support these fossils as Vespaculeata i.e., all Aculeata with the exception of traditional Chrysidoidea, but are equivocal about superfamilial placement; see Section 2 of below for our treatment of these taxa. A profusion of †Angarosphecidae are described from deposits throughout the Valangian and Albian (for synopsis, see table 1 of Zheng et al 2021 or Table S2 here; see also "On fossil Apoidea and the oldest Vespaculeata" in Section 2 below), and two genera preserved in Kachin amber have recently been attributed to this plesiomorphically defined group, †Burmasphex Melo & Rosa, 2018 and †Decasphex Zheng et al, 2021. Because †Angarosphecidae in general and the Lulworth and Durlston fossils in particular represent not only the earliest potential crown Aculeata, but also potential Apoidea, they are of very high interest for the evolution of the stinging wasps.…”

Section: Morphology-only Topology Searchesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evolution and systematics of the Aculeata and kin (Hymenoptera), with emphasis on the ants (Formicoidea: †@@@idae fam. nov., Formicidae)

Boudinot

Khouri

Richter

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Fossils not only provide unique opportunity to understand the "tempo and mode" of evolution but are essential for modeling lineage-contingent diversification histories. Here, we interrogate the Mesozoic fossil record of the Aculeata, with emphasis on the ants (Formicidae), and conduct an extended series of ancestral state estimation exercises on distributions of tip-dated combined-evidence phylogenies. We developed and illustrated from ground-up a set of 576 morphological characters which we scored for 144 extant and 431 fossil taxa; we used average posterior probability support to filter this to a target matrix of 303 taxa, for which we integrated strongly filtered ultraconserved element (UCE) data for 115 living species. We also implemented reversible jump MCMC (rjMCMC) and hidden state methods to model complex behavioral characters to test hypotheses about the pathway to obligate eusociality. In addition to revising the higher classification of all sampled groups to family or subfamily level using estimated character polarities to diagnose nodes across the phylogeny, we find that the mid-Cretaceous genera †Camelomecia and †Camelosphecia form a clade which is robustly supported as sister to the total clade Formicidae. For this reason, we name this extinct clade as †@@@idae fam. nov. and provide a definition for the expanded Formicoidea. Based on our results, we recognize three major phases in the early evolution of the ants: (1) origin of ants as running-adapted huntresses during the Late Jurassic in the "stinging aggressor" guild (Aculeata) among various lineages of "sneaking parasitoids" (non-aculeate Vespina); (2) the first formicoid radiation during the Early Cretaceous, by the end of which all major extant ant linages had originated; and (3) turnover of the Formicoidea at the end-Cretaceous leading to the second formicoid radiation, i.e., the Cenozoic formicid diversification. We conclude with a concentrated series of considerations for future directions of study with this dataset and beyond.

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Section: Morphology-only Topology Searchesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…192 below), rather having a pronotum which closely fits over the mesoscutum. SeeZheng et al (2021) for a key to the genera based on fore wing venation and a taxonomic synopsis at the species level. Malar space virtually absent (CB50: 0.69).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution and systematics of the Aculeata and kin (Hymenoptera), with emphasis on the ants (Formicoidea: †@@@idae fam. nov., Formicidae)

Boudinot

Khouri

Richter

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…The Apoidea diversified mainly during the Cretaceous, and most of the living families were already established by the end of the Early Cretaceous and the beginning of the Late Cretaceous (Branstetter et al, 2017;Peters et al, 2017;Sann et al, 2018;Rosa & Melo, 2021;Rosa & Melo, unpublished data). Even with this evident diversity of taxa during the period, most apoid wasp fossils from the Cretaceous have been traditionally described in a single family, †Angarosphecidae Rasnitsyn (Melo & Rosa, 2018;Rasnitsyn, 1975;Rasnitsyn et al, 1998Rasnitsyn et al, , 1999Zhang et al, 2018;Zheng et al, 2021). This family was proposed based on the lacustrine fossil †Angarosphex myrmicopterus Rasnitsyn from the Aptian Lagerstätte Baissa, Zaza Formation, Transbaikalia, in Russia (Rasnitsyn, 1975).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This family was proposed based on the lacustrine fossil †Angarosphex myrmicopterus Rasnitsyn from the Aptian Lagerstätte Baissa, Zaza Formation, Transbaikalia, in Russia (Rasnitsyn, 1975). Currently, about 15 genera and 50 species are included in †Angarosphecidae (Zheng et al, 2021). Several authors have already emphasized that this family comprises a paraphyletic or polyphyletic group, although a formal phylogenetic hypothesis for these taxa has never been proposed (Rasnitsyn et al, 1998(Rasnitsyn et al, , 1999Ohl & Engel, 2007;Rosa & Melo, 2021;Rosa & Melo, unpublished data).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A new fossil family of aculeate wasp sheds light on early evolution of Apoidea (Hymenoptera)

Rosa

Melo

2023

Systematic Entomology

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In the present work, we describe a new fossil family of Apoidea supported by phylogenetic analyses involving both fossil and extant groups. †Burmasphecidae fam.n. is based on †Burmasphex Melo & Rosa, a genus described from Burmese amber. We include in this family the monotypic genus †Decasphex Zheng, Zhang & Rasnitsyn also from Burmese amber. Additionally, we describe two new genera and four new species in †Burmasphecidae fam.n.: †Burmasphex mirabilis sp.n.; †Simplisphex gen.n., containing S. scutellatus sp.n. and †S. burmensis sp.n.; and †Callisphex robustus gen. et sp.n. In our phylogenetic study, we extended a pre‐existing matrix of morphological data and analysed it under parsimony and Bayesian inference. In the Bayesian inference analyses, the morphological dataset was partitioned under a homoplasy criterion. We postulate the first phylogenetic hypotheses for the placement of †Angarosphecidae based on the type species, †Angarosphex myrmicopterus Rasnitsyn, plus a new Burmese amber taxon, †A. alethes sp.n. We demonstrate that †Burmasphecidae fam.n. clearly belongs to Apoidea and has a sister relationship with the other representatives of the superfamily. Our results indicate that †Burmasphecidae fam.n. and †Angarosphecidae are distinct lineages, with the second clearly more derived than the first. We discuss the phylogenetic relationships of these fossil lineages with extant groups of both Apoidea and other Aculeata, and present morphological evidence for the first time supporting the Formicidae + Apoidea clade. Finally, we indicate some considerations about the paleoenvironment and the nature of the Burmese amber biota, suggesting an alternative hypothesis to the island endemism described in previous works.

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Two new wasps from mid-Cretaceous Myanmar amber (Hymenoptera: Apocrita)

Shih

Yang

et al. 2022

Cretaceous Research

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New angarosphecid wasp (Hymenoptera: Apoidea, Angarosphecidae) from the mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber

Cited by 4 publications

References 11 publications

Evolution and systematics of the Aculeata and kin (Hymenoptera), with emphasis on the ants (Formicoidea: †@@@idae fam. nov., Formicidae)

Evolution and systematics of the Aculeata and kin (Hymenoptera), with emphasis on the ants (Formicoidea: †@@@idae fam. nov., Formicidae)

A new fossil family of aculeate wasp sheds light on early evolution of Apoidea (Hymenoptera)

Two new wasps from mid-Cretaceous Myanmar amber (Hymenoptera: Apocrita)

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