Short-Winged Flower Beetle Discovered to Live in Myanmar 98 Million Years Ago

Paleontologists recently discovered a remarkably preserved 98-year-old short-winged flower beetle and linked pollen aggregations and coprolites in a piece of mid-Cretaceous amber that originated from northern Myanmar.

According to a Sci-News report, the discovery offers evidence of pollen-feeding in a Cretaceous beetle and confirms that beetle lineages visited early flowering plants also called 'angiosperms' in the cretaceous period.

Beetles are frequently referred to as likely candidates for the angiosperms' earliest pollinators because of their evolutionary history.

It has been suggested that the early links between beetles and angiosperms in the Cretaceous played a vital role in both groups' diversification.

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Pollination in Beetles

Until to date, pollination in beetles has been determined just on the basis of amber inclusions being preserved with pollen grains, having morphological topographies understood as potentially facilitating pollination, and having existing relatives known to have fed on pollen.

This newly-discovered pollen-feeding beetle, called Pelretes vivificus, existed a little over 98 million years ago in what is now called Myanmar.

The discovery's nearest relatives are short-winged flower beetles known as the family Kateretidae that presently occur in Australia, that visit a great range of flowers, not to mention feeding on pollen.

Essentially, according to paleontologist Professor Chenyang Cai, from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Pelretes vivificus is linked to clusters of pollen grains, proposing that short-winged flower beetles visited angiosperms in the Cretaceous.

Some aspects of the anatomy of the beetle, like its hairy abdomen, are adaptations as well, linked to pollination. The piece of amber studied by the team originated from a mine in the Hukawng Valley, Kachin State, northern Myanmar.

'Pelretes Vivificus'

Entomologist and paleontologist Dr. Erik Tihelka, from the University of Bristol said, aside from the unparalleled abundance of fossil insects, the amber is dated back to the mid-Cretaceous, "right when angiosperms were taking off."

Whereas, as Pelretes vivificus is not the first pollination beetle to be characterized from Cretaceous amber, this distinctive specimen was found to have preserved a bizarre hint about its diet.

The fossil is linked to the beetle coprolites that offer quite an atypical yet essential understanding of the diet of short-winged flower beetles in the Cretaceous.

The coprolites are totally comprised of pollen, a similar type that is discovered in clusters that surrounded the beetle and attached to its body, which propose that Pelretes vivificus, indeed, visited angiosperms, as earlier mentioned, to feed on their pollen.

Taking Advantage of Early Angiosperms

The finding of the study, Angiosperm pollinivory in a Cretaceous beetle, which is published in the Nature Plants journal, offers a direct association between early flowering plants in the Cretaceous, as well as their insect visitors.

It shows that such insect fossils were not only incidentally co-preserved along with pollen, although that there was a genuine biological link between the two.

A similar report from Phys.org, according to fossil pollen specialist Dr. Liqin Li, from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, the pollen linked to the beetle can be assigned to what's identified as genus Tricolpopollenites.

This group, Dr. Li explained, is attributed to a living group of derived angiosperms identified as 'eudicots,' that, as described in Basic Biology, includes the Malpighiales and Ericales orders.

Meanwhile, Professor Cai added, the finding shows that pollinators took advantage of early angiosperms soon after their first diversification and visited a varied range of groups by the mid-Cretaceous.

Related information is shown on Museum of Science, Boston's YouTube video below: