Late Permian wood-borings reveal an intricate network of ecological relationships

Zhuo Feng (), Jun Wang, Ronny Rößler, Adam Ślipiński and Conrad Labandeira ()
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Zhuo Feng: Yunnan University
Jun Wang: Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Ronny Rößler: Museum für Naturkunde
Adam Ślipiński: Australian National Insect Collection
Conrad Labandeira: Smithsonian Institution

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-6

Abstract: Abstract 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.

Date: 2017
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-00696-0

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