New Cretaceous Lacewings in a Transitional Lineage of Myrmeleontoidea and Their Phylogenetic Implications.

Abstract

Simple SummaryThe Cretaceous myrmeleontoids (antlions, spoon-winged lacewings, split-footed lacewings, etc.), as one of the diverse neuropteran groups, are valuable for understanding the early evolution of Myrmeleontoidea. Here, two new species individually belonging to the extinct families Cratosmylidae and Babinskaiidae are described from the mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber of Myanmar. The morphology-based phylogeny of Myrmeleontoidea herein inferred recovered the positions of these new taxa but questioned the familial status of Cratosmylidae. The new finding also highlights the Gondwanan origin of the lacewing paleofauna from the mid-Cretaceous of northern Myanmar.The extinct neuropteran families Cratosmylidae and Babinskaiidae hitherto only known from the Cretaceous represent the transitional lineage between Nymphidae and advanced myrmeleontoids (e.g., Nemopteridae and Myrmeleontidae) in the superfamily Myrmeleontoidea. Here, we describe two new species, which respectively belong to Cratosmylidae and Babinskaiidae, namely, Araripenymphes burmanus sp. nov. and Paradoxoleon chenruii gen. et sp. nov., from the mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber of Myanmar. Cratosmylidae, which was previously only recorded from the Lower Cretaceous of Brazil (Crato Formation), is first reported from the mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber of Myanmar, and the co-occurrence of Araripenymphes Menon, Martins-Neto and Martill, 2005 across South America and Asia further documents the Gondwanan origin of the northern Myanmar amber lacewing paleofauna. The first finding of a deeply bifurcated forewing MP with two free branches in Babinskaiidae (viz., Paradoxoleon chenruii gen. et sp. nov.) highlights the morphological diversity of this extinct family. The phylogenetic positions of Araripenymphes burmanus sp. nov. and Paradoxoleon chenruii gen. et sp. nov. were recovered on the basis of a morphology-based phylogenetic analysis, and the monophyly of Cratosmylidae + Babinskaiidae was corroborated. Given the paraphyly of Cratosmylidae, its familial status is discussed.