Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013, USA.
Biol Lett. 2019 Nov 29;15(11):20190657. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2019.0657. Epub 2019 Nov 20.
Mite houses, or acarodomatia, are found on the leaves of over 2000 living species of flowering plants today. These structures facilitate tri-trophic interactions between the host plant, its fungi or herbivore adversaries, and fungivorous or predaceous mites by providing shelter for the mite consumers. Previously, the oldest acarodomatia were described on a Cenozoic Era fossil leaf dating to 49 Myr in age. Here, we report the first occurrence of Mesozoic Era acarodomatia in the fossil record from leaves discovered in the Upper Cretaceous Kaiparowits Formation (76.6-74.5 Ma) in southern UT, USA. This discovery extends the origin of acarodomatia by greater than 25 Myr, and the antiquity of this plant-mite mutualism provides important constraints for the evolutionary history of acarodomatia on angiosperms.
螨类栖息地，又称螨室，现今存在于超过 2000 种开花植物的叶片上。这些结构通过为螨类取食者提供庇护所，促进了宿主植物、其真菌或草食性天敌与食真菌性或捕食性螨类之间的三营养级相互作用。此前，最古老的螨室被描述为一块距今 4900 万年的新生代化石叶。在这里，我们报告了中生代螨室在化石记录中的首次出现，这些化石是在美国犹他州南部上白垩统凯帕罗维茨组（7660-7450 万年前）发现的叶片中发现的。这一发现将螨室的起源延长了超过 2500 万年，这种植物-螨类共生关系的古老性为螨室在被子植物上的进化历史提供了重要的限制。
