The record of Australian Jurassic plant–arthropod interactions

Abstract

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.

Phytophagy on fossil ferns from Argentina (Palo Pintado Formation, Late Miocene): a review of their fossil record and ichnotaxonomy

“…These traces correspond with marginal excisions on Cynepteris lasiophora Ash, 1969(Ash, 1997, and skeletonizations on Dictyophyllum nathorstii Zeiller, 1903 (Feng et al, 2014). In Middle Jurassic from Australia have been documented hole feeding traces on Angiopteris blackii van Cittert, 1975(Hill, 1987 and marginal and hole feeding damages on Cladophlebis australis Morris, 1845 (McLoughlin et al, 2015).…”

“…In the Southern Hemisphere, there are few records of coprolites occurring in tissues of ferns from Permian and Triassic deposits of Antarctica (Kellogg & Taylor, 2004;Slater et al, 2012). Only three reports of folivory are known on Jurassic fossil ferns from Australia (Hill, 1987;McLoughlin et al, 2015) and early Eocene from Argentina (Carvalho et al, 2013) and one record of piercing-and-sucking on fi licalean fern from Jurassic of Australia (McLoughlin et al, 2015). The fi rst evidences of folivory in ferns appeared in the Late Triassic from USA and China.…”

“…Examples of insect damages on fossils is based on indirect evidence of coprolites that often occur within the rachises, stems and sporangia (Seward, 1923(Seward, , 1924Rothwell & Scott, 1983;Scott & Paterson, 1984;Scott et al, 1985;Rex & Galtier, 1986;Labandeira & Beall, 1990;Lesniskowska, 1990;Labandeira et al, 1997;Ash, 2000;Rößler, 2000;Labandeira & Phillips, 2002;Kellogg & Taylor, 2004;D'Rozario et al, 2011;Slater et al, 2012), and to a lesser extent damage infl icted on leaves (Webb, 1982;Hill, 1987;Ash, 1997;Labandeira, 2002b, McLoughlin et al, 2015. Fossil insect-plant interactions in Argentina are poorly documented.…”

Taxonomic review and phylogenetic inference elucidate the evolutionary history of Mesozoic Procercopidae, with new data from the Cretaceous Jehol Biota of NE China (Hemiptera, Cicadomorpha)

“…Up to now, thirty‐seven species attributed to eight genera within Procercopidae have been reported from the Jurassic and Cretaceous of Eurasia (Table ; Figures and ), and some undescribed specimens assigned to this family were also recorded from the Upper Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous of Siberia and Mongolia (Shcherbakov, ). McLoughlin, Martin, and Beattie () reported an insect fossil from the Upper Jurassic of Talbragar Fossil Bed, Australia, and assigned it to Procercopidae. The specimen, however, is poorly preserved with few diagnostic characters recognized, and so its precise systematic position requires more fossil materials with clear morphological features.…”

An introduction to Jurassic biodiversity and terrestrialenvironments

“…Building on previous surveys of the relatively little-studied Australian Jurassic floras (Turner et al 2009;McLoughlin et al 2015), McLoughlin et al (2018) systematically describe the range of bennettitopsid reproductive structures from Mesozoic strata of that continent. They formally define five new species of Williamsonia, one new species of Cycadolepis, and propose the new combination Fredlindia moretonensis.…”