Pohl Hans, Batelka Jan, Prokop Jakub, Müller Patrick, Yavorskaya Margarita I, Beutel Rolf G
Institut für Zoologie und Evolutionsforschung, Spezielle Zoologie und Entomologie, Friedrich-Schiller Universität Jena, Jena, Germany.
Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University Prague, Praha, Czech Republic.
PeerJ. 2018 Nov 22;6:e5943. doi: 10.7717/peerj.5943. eCollection 2018.
Twisted winged insects (Strepsiptera) are a highly specialized small order of parasitic insects. Whether parasitism developed at an early or late stage in the evolution of the group was unknown. Here we record and describe the first Mesozoic strepsipteran primary larva embedded in Burmese amber (∼99 million years ago). This extends the origin of parasitism back by at least ∼50 million years, and reveals that this specialized life style has evolved in the Mesozoic or even earlier in the group. The extremely small first instar displays all diagnostic characters of strepsipteran immatures of this stage and is nearly identical with those of Mengenillidae, one of the most "ancestral" extant strepsipteran taxa. This demonstrates a remarkable evolutionary stasis over 100 million years. The new finding strongly weakens the case of small larvae embedded in Cretaceous amber interpreted as strepsipteran immatures. They differ in many structural features from extant strepsipteran primary larvae and are very likely parasitic beetle larvae.
捻翅目昆虫是一类高度特化的小型寄生昆虫。该类群在进化过程中寄生现象是在早期还是晚期出现尚不清楚。在此，我们记录并描述了首个保存在缅甸琥珀中的中生代捻翅目初龄幼虫（约9900万年前）。这将寄生现象的起源至少追溯到了约5000万年前，并揭示出这种特殊的生活方式在中生代甚至更早就在该类群中演化形成。极小的一龄幼虫展现出了该阶段捻翅目未成熟个体的所有诊断特征，并且与最“原始”的现存捻翅目类群之一——原捻翅科的幼虫几乎完全相同。这表明了超过1亿年的显著进化停滞。这一新发现有力地削弱了将白垩纪琥珀中嵌入的小型幼虫解释为捻翅目未成熟个体的观点。它们在许多结构特征上与现存捻翅目初龄幼虫不同，很可能是寄生性甲虫幼虫。
