Giant Jurassic dragon lacewing larvae with lacustrine palaeoecology represent the oldest fossil record of larval neuropterans
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- Xuheng Du
- School of Ecology/State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107, People's Republic of China
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- Kecheng Niu
- State Key Laboratory of Cellular Stress Biology, School of Life Sciences, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361105, People's Republic of China
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- Tong Bao
- School of Ecology/State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107, People's Republic of China
抄録
<jats:p>Neuropterans seem to be less specious among holometabolans, while they are in fact the relicts of a diverse group from the Mesozoic era. Their early radiation resulted in great family level morphological heterogeneity of extant neuropterans, especially of their larvae. The earliest previously reported fossil larvae of this group were from the Early Cretaceous, where they already showed high taxonomic diversity and an extremely wide range of variations in morphotypes. In this work, the earliest record of the larva of the neuropteran<jats:italic>Palaeoneurorthus baii</jats:italic>gen. et sp. nov. from the Middle Jurassic Daohugou Beds of China is described. The larvae, which have large and elongated bodies, straight stylets with curved apices, an extremely elongated cervix and an extended anterior lobe of pronotum, are placed in Nevrorthidae. The elongated cervix is probably a specialized adaptation for hunting small organisms. The palaeoenvironment of these larvae indicates that larvae of Nevrorthidae have exhibited stable aquatic ecology since the Middle Jurassic, and underwent a possible shift from lakes to more lotic yet constricted modern mountain rivulet habitats over time.</jats:p>
収録刊行物
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- Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
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Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 290 (1993), 2023-02-15
The Royal Society