Abstract
Larvae of the group Holometabola (beetles, wasps, flies, moths and others) differ significantly in their morphology from their corresponding adults. In most larvae, appendages and other structures protruding from the body (antennae, palps, legs, trunk processes) appear less elongate than in their corresponding adults, providing the impression that these larvae are restricted to a certain degree in developing more elongate structures. We provide here numerous counterexamples of larvae of lacewings (Neuroptera). These include different forms of elongated antennae, mandibles, maxillae, labial palps, legs, trunk processes and neck regions. Most of these examples are larvae preserved in different types of 100 million-year-old amber. The longest neck region was found in an extant specimen. All these examples demonstrate that certain branches of Neuroptera indeed had larval forms that possessed strongly elongated structures. Hence there is no principal constraint that hinders holometabolan larvae to develop such structures.
Highlights
Larvae of the group Holometabola differ significantly in their morphology from their corresponding adults
The dominating part of the modern day terrestrial fauna is represented by the group Holometabola with its four major hyper-diverse lineages, each with far more than 100,000 formally described s pecies[1]: Hymenoptera, Coleoptera, Lepidoptera and Diptera
Despite the larvae playing a major role for the diversification of holometabolans, it is often not easy to identify a larva to a species
Summary
Larvae of the group Holometabola (beetles, wasps, flies, moths and others) differ significantly in their morphology from their corresponding adults. We provide here numerous counterexamples of larvae of lacewings (Neuroptera) These include different forms of elongated antennae, mandibles, maxillae, labial palps, legs, trunk processes and neck regions. The ancestral type of larva in Holometabola has been reconstructed as a rather simple-organised one; many structures such as eyes, antennae, mouthparts, and locomotory legs are usually considered to be reduced or simplified[7,8] All these notions indirectly imply that holometabolan larvae are to a certain degree constrained in their possibilities to evolve morphologically diverse forms. Fossil resins (= amber) known from the Cretaceous (between 130–100 million years old) have provided larvae with different structures of hypertrophied size This includes larvae with super-sized mouthparts, unusual armament on the trunk, and long “necks” i.e. the region directly posterior to the head capsule. We review known forms, demonstrating their morphological exceptionality, and report new, highly unusual lacewing larvae with hypertrophied mouthparts preserved in 100 million-year-old Cretaceous amber from Myanmar
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