Journal
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 8, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-00696-0
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Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [41422201, 41672015, 41530101, 41372011]
- Strategic Priority Research Program (B) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences [XDB18000000, XDPB05]
- State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, CAS [20161101]
- Yunnan Provincial Science and Technology Department [2016FA019]
- China Geological Survey [DD20160061]
- Volkswagen Foundation [Az: I/84638]
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [RO 1273/3-1]
- Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation [1134259]
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Beetles are the most diverse group of macroscopic organisms since the mid-Mesozoic. Much of beetle speciosity is attributable to myriad life habits, particularly diverse-feeding strategies involving interactions with plant substrates, such as wood. However, the life habits and early evolution of wood-boring beetles remain shrouded in mystery from a limited fossil record. Here we report new material from the upper Permian (Changhsingian Stage, ca. 254-252 million-years ago) of China documenting a microcosm of ecological associations involving a polyphagan wood-borer consuming cambial and wood tissues of the conifer Ningxiaites specialis. This earliest evidence for a component community of several trophically interacting taxa is frozen in time by exceptional preservation. The combination of an entry tunnel through bark, a cambium mother gallery, and up to 11 eggs placed in lateral niches-from which emerge multi-instar larval tunnels that consume cambium, wood and bark-is ecologically convergent with Early Cretaceous bark-beetle borings 120 million-years later.
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