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Diversity
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Paleoecology of Insects
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Paleoecology of Insects

A special issue of Diversity (ISSN 1424-2818). This special issue belongs to the section "Animal Diversity".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (14 March 2023) | Viewed by 13739

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Uwe. Kaulfuss

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Animal Evolution and Biodiversity, Johann-Friedrich-Blumenbach Institute of Zoology and Anthropology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
Interests: terrestrial Palaeoecosystems; fossil record and evolution of New Zealand insects; maar lakes as fossil Lagerstätten; depositional setting and inclusions of New Zealand amber

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Insects comprise the most diverse and evolutionarily successful group of multicellular organisms on the planet, and play a fundamental ecological role in terrestrial and freshwater habitats. They interact with other animals, plants, and their environment—either as an individual or as a community—in diverse and complex, often highly specialized ways.

Insects have a vast fossil record and new taxa are being described continuously from compression fossils in sedimentary rocks or three-dimensionally preserved inclusions in amber. This Special Issue seeks original research and review papers on insect ecology in the geological past. Topics may include (but are not restricted to) eusociality, symbiosis, parasitism, parasitoidism, phoresy, trophic interactions, pollination, herbivory, nutrient recycling, and ecosystem reconstruction based on fossil insects. Contributions on any taxonomic group of insects, ichnofossils, or plant fossils documenting plant–insect interaction are welcome. Papers on paleoecological aspects of spiders, mites, and other arachnids are also invited, as well as taxonomic papers if the taxa presented provide new information on the ecological complexity of a certain paleohabitat/fossil locality.

Dr. Uwe. Kaulfuss
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Diversity is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2100 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • insecta
  • arachnida
  • fossils
  • ecology
  • paleo-environment
  • plant–insect interaction

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Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

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14 pages, 4362 KiB  
Article
Discovery of the Puparia of a Whitefly Species Found on Malvaceae in the Pliocene Rajdanda Formation, Jharkhand, Eastern India
by Jowita Drohojowska, Gregory A. Evans, Mahasin Ali Khan, Taposhi Hazra and Jacek Szwedo
Diversity 2023, 15(4), 564; https://doi.org/10.3390/d15040564 - 17 Apr 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2054
Abstract
A new genus and species of fossil whitefly, Praealeurolobus indicus gen. et sp. nov., is described and illustrated based on puparia found on leaves of a malvaceous plant from the Pliocene Rajdanda Formation in Eastern India. It is the first record of whitefly [...] Read more.
A new genus and species of fossil whitefly, Praealeurolobus indicus gen. et sp. nov., is described and illustrated based on puparia found on leaves of a malvaceous plant from the Pliocene Rajdanda Formation in Eastern India. It is the first record of whitefly puparia on leaves from the Neogene deposits of Asia and the second taxon formally named and described from such adpression fossils. The cephalothorax of some of the puparia has a large, irregularly shaped hole with jagged edges, typical of the emergence holes of parasitoids of modern-day whiteflies and represents the earliest record of parasitism on whiteflies. This finding enriches our knowledge of the fossil record of Aleyrodidae in connection with allied fossils and provides new insight into the ecological interactions of the palaeobiota and taphonomy of fossils preserved in the Pliocene Rajdanda Formation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Paleoecology of Insects)
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41 pages, 195129 KiB  
Article
The Early History of Giant Cockroaches: Gyroblattids and Necymylacrids (Blattodea) of the Late Carboniferous
by Joerg W. Schneider and Ronny Rößler
Diversity 2023, 15(3), 429; https://doi.org/10.3390/d15030429 - 14 Mar 2023
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 4399
Abstract
Large-winged blattoids of the Middle to Late Pennsylvanian reveal a striking appearance, diversification, and decline in the fossil record. Among them, the families Necymylacridae Durden, 1969, and Gyroblattidae Durden, 1969, as well as the mylacrid genus Opsiomylacris exhibit, the largest pre-Cenozoic blattoids with [...] Read more.
Large-winged blattoids of the Middle to Late Pennsylvanian reveal a striking appearance, diversification, and decline in the fossil record. Among them, the families Necymylacridae Durden, 1969, and Gyroblattidae Durden, 1969, as well as the mylacrid genus Opsiomylacris exhibit, the largest pre-Cenozoic blattoids with forewing lengths up to 7.5 cm. As finds from coal-bearing sedimentary basins in Europe, North Africa, and North America indicate, these giant insects started to spread around the Bashkirian–Moscovian transition and experienced a diversification in late Moscovian and Kasimovian times, until they disappeared in the middle Gzhelian. Whereas necymylacrids are only patchily reported and still lack distributional patterns, we disclose the occurrence and particular habitat preference of gyroblattids. Although appearing first in some vast North American basins, they became successively widespread only in small-sized basins of the European Variscan interior. Frequently found associated with enigmatic gymnosperms, they may have lived in well-drained hinterland areas from where they immigrated into the ever-wet basin centers only with increasing seasonality. Gyroblattids apparently followed meso- to xerophilous plants and likely colonized spaces offering a broader spectrum of edaphic conditions that resulted from the closeness of erosional and depositional areas. The presented analysis and revision of all gyroblattids aim to facilitate future more realistic biodiversity estimations based on fossil taxa. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Paleoecology of Insects)
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40 pages, 12357 KiB  
Article
Expanding the Fossil Record of Soldier Fly Larvae—An Important Component of the Cretaceous Amber Forest
by André P. Amaral, Denis Gombos, Gideon T. Haug, Carolin Haug, Joshua Gauweiler, Marie K. Hörnig and Joachim T. Haug
Diversity 2023, 15(2), 247; https://doi.org/10.3390/d15020247 - 9 Feb 2023
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2610
Abstract
Larvae of soldier flies and their closest relatives (Diptera: Stratiomyomorpha) are important decomposers of organic material, including wood, that take part in carbon cycling. They also play a certain role in the modern-day animal and human food industry, representing economic value. Larvae of [...] Read more.
Larvae of soldier flies and their closest relatives (Diptera: Stratiomyomorpha) are important decomposers of organic material, including wood, that take part in carbon cycling. They also play a certain role in the modern-day animal and human food industry, representing economic value. Larvae of Stratiomyomorpha are considered to be rather rare in the fossil record. Indeed, only very few larvae have been reported so far. Here, we demonstrate that larvae of Stratiomyomorpha are in fact abundant in the Cretaceous, at least in Myanmar amber (about 100 million years old), based on more than 100 amber pieces containing larvae. The specimens could be differentiated into three morphotypes, two already described in a previous work, and a new one. For one morphotype, three larval stages could be distinguished by analysing the dimensions of the head capsules. A quantitative analysis of body shapes indicates a lower morphological diversity of the fossil sample in comparison to the extant fauna, but suggests that they might have had a different ecology in the past. It appears that the data set is not yet saturated, i.e., that more fossil larvae of this group, including different morphologies, are expected to be found. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Paleoecology of Insects)
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14 pages, 5536 KiB  
Article
Discovery of the First Blattinopsids of the Genus Glaphyrophlebia Handlirsch, 1906 (Paoliida: Blattinopsidae) in the Upper Carboniferous of Southern France and Spain and Hypothesis on the Diversification of the Family
by André Nel, Romain Garrouste, Enrique Peñalver, Antonio Hernández-Orúe and Corentin Jouault
Diversity 2022, 14(12), 1129; https://doi.org/10.3390/d14121129 - 16 Dec 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1827
Abstract
Glaphyrophlebia victoiriensis sp. nov. (Paoliida: Blattinopsidae) is the third Gzhelian representative of the genus and is described based on a beautiful forewing from the Var department in Southern France. Together with the description of another forewing fragment of a Glaphyrophlebia sp. from the [...] Read more.
Glaphyrophlebia victoiriensis sp. nov. (Paoliida: Blattinopsidae) is the third Gzhelian representative of the genus and is described based on a beautiful forewing from the Var department in Southern France. Together with the description of another forewing fragment of a Glaphyrophlebia sp. from the Province of León in NW Spain, they improve our knowledge of fossil insects from French and Spanish upper Carboniferous deposits. The specimen of Glaphyrophlebia sp. is the first mention of the family in the Carboniferous of Spain and extends the geographical distribution of the genus. These descriptions suggest that the genus Glaphyrophlebia was speciose during the Upper Pennsylvanian, while otherwise very diverse in the lower and middle Permian strata of the Russian Federation. We proposed the first hypothesis to explain the diversification of the family and of its most speciose genera and to argue that their diversity dynamics were likely linked with the major environmental changes that followed the collapse of the Carboniferous rainforest, notably the extension of arid biomes during the Permian period. The exquisite preservation and the fineness of the sediment from Tante Victoire, in which the new species was found, suggests that the locality is suitable for preserving other fossil insects and will require additional investigations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Paleoecology of Insects)
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Review

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15 pages, 5531 KiB  
Review
Where the Immatures of Triassic Diptera Developed
by Elena D. Lukashevich
Diversity 2023, 15(4), 582; https://doi.org/10.3390/d15040582 - 21 Apr 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1969
Abstract
Immature Diptera are more diverse and abundant in fresh water than any other insect order. The question arises whether the earliest dipterans, known from the Upper Buntsandstein of Europe (early Anisian, Middle Triassic), already developed in water and whether such mode of life [...] Read more.
Immature Diptera are more diverse and abundant in fresh water than any other insect order. The question arises whether the earliest dipterans, known from the Upper Buntsandstein of Europe (early Anisian, Middle Triassic), already developed in water and whether such mode of life was inherited from the ancestor of the order or if, alternatively, the dipteran larvae were ancestrally terrestrial. Nematoceran immatures have become common and diverse in the Mesozoic fossil record since the Middle Jurassic, but the vast majority of them represent only two culicomorphan families, Chaoboridae and Chironomidae. Earlier records and records of immatures of other families from the Mesozoic are extremely rare. A total of four larvae and about 30 pupae have been described from Anisian assemblages of France and Spain. Among these, one larva clearly belongs to Culicomorpha, the infraorder most closely associated with fresh waters, and one larva to Bibionomorpha, the infraorder most closely associated with terrestrial habitats, while the rest are hard to classify. Nevertheless, most of the pupae are morphologically similar to the semi-aquatic pupae of extant Limoniidae and Ptychopteridae from wet habitats. The oligopneustic respiratory systems of the Anisian larvae and their apparently allochthonous burial also suggest their semi-aquatic development, which appears to have been the ancestral mode of life of Diptera. The absence of dipteran immatures in lacustrine Konservat-Lagerstätten of the Madygen and the Cow Branch Formations (Ladinian–Carnian and Norian, respectively) is explained by the aquatic conditions being unfavorable for insect immatures and invertebrates in general. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Paleoecology of Insects)
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