Fossils reshape the Sternorrhyncha evolutionary tree (Insecta, Hemiptera)

Jowita Drohojowska,Di-Ying Huang,Dagmara Żyła,Patrick Müller,Jacek Szwedo

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-68220-x

Abstract

The Sternorrhyncha, which comprise about 18,700 described recent species, is a suborder of the Hemiptera, one of big five most diverse insect orders. In the modern fauna, these tiny phytophages comprise insects of great ecological and economic importance, like aphids (Aphidomorpha), scale insects (Coccidomorpha), whiteflies (Aleyrodomorpha) and psyllids (Psylloidea). Their evolutionary history can be traced back to the Late Carboniferous, but the early stages of their evolution and diversification is poorly understood, with two known extinct groups—Pincombeomorpha and Naibiomorpha variously placed in classifications and relationships hypotheses. Most of the recent Sternorrhyncha groups radiated rapidly during the Cretaceous. Here we report the new finding of very specialised sternorrhynchans found as inclusions in mid-Cretaceous amber from Kachin state (northern Myanmar), which represent another extinct lineage within this hemipteran suborder. These fossils, proposed to be placed in a new infraorder, are revealed to be related to whiteflies and psyllids. We present, also for the first time, the results of phylogenetic analyses covering extinct and extant lineages of the Sternorrhyncha.

Highlights

The Hemiptera is an ancient insect order, demonstrating extraordinary life histories and highly specialized morphological adaptations, as they have exploited diverse habitats and food sources through over 300 million years of their evolution
The data matrix used for the analysis consisted of 10 taxa (Fulgoromorpha taken as an outgroup, and 9 Sternorrhyncha ingroups, including extinct groups, see Supplementary information 1 Table S1) and 42 characters
Dinglomorpha presents a combination of unique features, such as vein ScP present as separate fold at the base of common stem R + Maximum Parsimony (MP) + CuA and base of this stem weakened

Summary

Introduction

The Hemiptera is an ancient insect order, demonstrating extraordinary life histories and highly specialized morphological adaptations, as they have exploited diverse habitats and food sources through over 300 million years of their evolution. Representatives of the Sternorrhyncha are tiny sucking phytophagous insects, representing nearly 19,000 described extant and extinct species distributed worldwide They are highly diverse morphologically and ecologically, containing several extant infraorders Aphidomorpha, Coccidomorpha, Aleyrodomorpha) and Psyllodea, as well as extinct ones Naibiomorpha and P incombeomorpha[1,4]. Both the fossil record from Moscovian of A vion[5] and molecular divergence e stimation[6] show that the group was present during the Carboniferous. The fossils described below are so morphologically remote and disparate from the other extinct and extant groups, that they cannot be placed in any of already proposed groups They can be recognised as sternorrhynchan insect, based on characters of the head, thorax and wing venation. This motivated us to apply a phylogenetic approach to resolve the systematic position of the studied fossils

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion