The snakefly family Mesoraphidiidae (Insecta: Raphidioptera) from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation, China: systematic revision and phylogenetic implications

Unraveling the evolutionary history of the snakefly family Inocelliidae (Insecta: Raphidioptera) through integrative phylogenetics

“…Such a hypothesis was supported by a recent finding of diverse species of the extinct family Baissopteridae, which possess male genital characters similar to Inocelliidae (Lu et al., 2020). Nevertheless, no definite inocelliid has been found from the Mesozoic, and the relationships between the diverse fossils and extant snakeflies remain elusive (Lu et al., 2020; Lyu et al., 2020). Therefore, at present, the cladogenesis and its spatio‐temporal mode can only be traced back to the Eocene at a time when inocelliids, according to fossil evidence, explicitly occurred (Aspöck & Aspöck, 2004; Makarkin et al., 2019).…”

“…Compared with Raphidiidae, Inocelliidae also can be distinguished by the absence of a veinlet within the pterostigma, the absence of a proximal veinlet in the pterostigma, shortened, funnel‐like tarsomere 2 and shell‐like male gonocoxite 9 (Aspöck et al., 1991). Nevertheless, many diagnostic characters of Inocelliidae are shared by some Mesozoic fossil snakeflies, and such similarity obscures the systematic position of this family in Raphidioptera (Liu et al., 2016; Lu et al., 2020; Lyu et al., 2020). As far as known, the larvae of all Inocelliidae are corticolous, which means that these insects require trees with a suitable bark for their development.…”