Until the advent of phylogenomics,the atypical morphology of extant represen-tatives of the insect orders Grylloblattodea(ice-crawlers)and Mantophasmatodea(gladi-ators)had confounding effects on efforts to resolve the...Until the advent of phylogenomics,the atypical morphology of extant represen-tatives of the insect orders Grylloblattodea(ice-crawlers)and Mantophasmatodea(gladi-ators)had confounding effects on efforts to resolve their placement within Polyneoptera.This recent research has unequivocally shown that these species-poor groups are closely related and form the clade Xenonomia.Nonetheless,divergence dates of these groups re-main poorly constrained,and their evolutionary history debated,as the few well-identified fossils,characterized by a suite of morphological features similar to that of extant forms,are comparatively young.Notably,the extant forms of both groups are wingless,whereas most of the pre-Cretaceous insect fossil record is composed of winged insects,which represents a major shortcoming of the taxonomy.Here,we present new specimens em-bedded in mid-Cretaceous amber from Myanmar and belonging to the recently described species Aristovia danili.The abundant material and pristine preservation allowed a de-tailed documentation of the morphology of the species,including critical head features.Combined with a morphological data set encompassing all Polyneoptera,these new data unequivocally demonstrate that A.danili is a winged stem Grylloblattodea.This discov-ery demonstrates that winglessness was acquired independently in Grylloblattodea and Mantophasmatodea.Concurrently,wing apomorphic traits shared by the new fossil and earlier fossils demonstrate that a large subset of the former Protorthoptera"assemblage,representing a third of all known insect species in some Permian localities,are genuine representatives of Xenonomia.Data from the fossil record depict a distinctive evolution-ary trajectory,with the group being both highly diverse and abundant during the Permian but experiencing a severe decline from the Triassic onwards.展开更多
基金This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(no.42272004,42288201,32020103006).
文摘Until the advent of phylogenomics,the atypical morphology of extant represen-tatives of the insect orders Grylloblattodea(ice-crawlers)and Mantophasmatodea(gladi-ators)had confounding effects on efforts to resolve their placement within Polyneoptera.This recent research has unequivocally shown that these species-poor groups are closely related and form the clade Xenonomia.Nonetheless,divergence dates of these groups re-main poorly constrained,and their evolutionary history debated,as the few well-identified fossils,characterized by a suite of morphological features similar to that of extant forms,are comparatively young.Notably,the extant forms of both groups are wingless,whereas most of the pre-Cretaceous insect fossil record is composed of winged insects,which represents a major shortcoming of the taxonomy.Here,we present new specimens em-bedded in mid-Cretaceous amber from Myanmar and belonging to the recently described species Aristovia danili.The abundant material and pristine preservation allowed a de-tailed documentation of the morphology of the species,including critical head features.Combined with a morphological data set encompassing all Polyneoptera,these new data unequivocally demonstrate that A.danili is a winged stem Grylloblattodea.This discov-ery demonstrates that winglessness was acquired independently in Grylloblattodea and Mantophasmatodea.Concurrently,wing apomorphic traits shared by the new fossil and earlier fossils demonstrate that a large subset of the former Protorthoptera"assemblage,representing a third of all known insect species in some Permian localities,are genuine representatives of Xenonomia.Data from the fossil record depict a distinctive evolution-ary trajectory,with the group being both highly diverse and abundant during the Permian but experiencing a severe decline from the Triassic onwards.
