The Fossil Record of Insect Mouthparts: Innovation, Functional Convergence, and Associations with Other Organisms

Florivory of Early Cretaceous flowers by functionally diverse insects: implications for early angiosperm pollination

“…The eight localities of the Dakota Formation consist of approximately 7858 total plant specimens, which yielded 645 (8.2%) flower specimens that were assessed for insect damage, some of which were photographically documented (electronic supplementary material, text S2). Flower specimens previously were identified to morphotype by Dilcher and Manchester [ 10 , 36 ], and Xiao, but mostly by the latter. The plant specimens were categorized into 32 flower morphotypes, one of which was Dakotanthus cordiformis ( figure 1 ; electronic supplementary material, figures S2, S3, S6 and appendix 1).…”

“…Associations were established between the pattern of Dakota insect damage with the relevant insect mouthpart class borne by an insect that would have produced that damage [ 36 , 52 , 53 ]. Such relationships, based on modern data [ 36 ] (electronic supplementary material, table S3), were made to better constrain the identities of potential florivores and pollinators (electronic supplementary material, text S6). However, Dakota damage caused by adult ectognathate, larval ectognathate and sericterate mouthpart classes typically could not be separated from each other.…”

“…Florivory can be a form of predation if plant embryonic tissues are destroyed before the opening of the flower, or if there is the consumption of immature pollen, features that do not appear present in bowl-shaped Dakota flowers, as the damage is overwhelmingly on inner petal surfaces. Consequently, florivores such as Orthoptera (katydids), Hemiptera (aphids, bugs), Thysanoptera (thrips), Coleoptera (beetles) and Hymenoptera (sawflies, wasps, bees) with mandibulate, stylate or similarly modified mouthparts [ 36 ], provide good proxy data for the broad spectrum of pollinator interactions on flowers [ 37 ] ( table 1 ). However, a substantial component such as most adult Diptera [ 51 ] and Lepidoptera are nondamagers, as they do not leave damage on flowers.…”

Rich and Specialized Plant-Insect Associations in a Middle–Late Paleocene (58–60 Ma) Neotropical Rainforest (Bogotá Formation, Colombia)

“…Each DT is a distinctive style of biological damage on a leaf-caused by an insect, mite, pathogen, or rarely by a myriapod or gastropod-and is defined by macromorphological features such as size, shape, occurrence, position on a leaf, and membership in a particular FFG; as well as micromorphological features such as callus tissue development, patterns of frass accumulation, and scar and egg placement in oviposition lesions (Labandeira et al, 2007). In turn, FFGs are a more encompassing category of insect feeding strategies, each of which consists of similar DTs, defined by a particular mode of tissue consumption by arthropods and mostly associated with mouthpart structure (Labandeira, 2019). Pathogens, represented by viruses, bacteria and especially fungi, have a very different mode of accessing live plant tissues (Labandeira & Prevec, 2014), and are a group of DTs encompassed by a separate FFG.…”

<p class="ZootaxaTitle">All genera of the world: Order †Lophioneurida—fossil out-groups of Thripida (Animalia: Arthropoda: Insecta)

“…Within the Jurassic Lophioneurids were still common and widespread but their decline is evident since the Early Cretaceous-when aeolothripid Thysanoptera became more diverse (Zherikhin 2002)-and they most likely had disappeared before the dawn of the Paleogene. Fossils reveal the close relationship between Lophioneurida and Thysanoptera sensu stricto: Lophioneurids provided fundamental features that constitute the head and mouthparts of modern Thysanoptera including an asymmetrical mouth cone with a stylet-like mandible and laciniae, and the reduction or loss of the right mandible (Labandeira 2019;Nel et al 2014).…”