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A newly identified parasitic wasp that buzzed and stole among the dinosaurs 99 million years ago has evolved a bizarre mechanism to trap other creatures and force them to unintentively house its young people, according to new research.
Paleontologists have studied 16 specimens of the tiny wasp preserved in Amber dating from the Cretaceous period which was previously determined in Myanmar. Unknown species, now called Sirenobethylus Charybdis, had a Flytrap Venus type structure on its abdomen which could have allowed him to trap other insects, the researchers reported on Thursday in the BMC BIOLOGY JOURNAL.
“When I looked at the first specimen, I noticed this expansion at the forefront of the abdomen, and I thought it should be an air bubble. It is quite often that you see air bubbles around the specimens in Amber,” said the co -author of the Lars Vilhelmsen study, an expert in wasp and commissioner at the Natural History Museum of Denmark.
“But then, I looked at a few more specimens, then I went back to the first. It was actually part of the animal.”
Vilhelmsen and his colleagues from Normal Capital University in Beijing have determined that the structure was mobile because it was kept in different positions on different specimens.
“Sometimes the lower component, as we call it, is open, and sometimes it is closed,” said Vilhelmsen. “It was clearly a mobile structure and something that was used to grasp something.”
The closest comparison found in nature today is Venus Flytrap, a carnivorous plant with hinge leaves that close when prey flies inside, according to the new study.
“There is no way to know how an insect deceased 100 million years ago lived. So you are looking for analogues in modern insect fauna. Do we have something among the wasps or other groups that look like this? ” He said.
“And there is no real analog within insects. We had to get out of the animal kingdom in the plant kingdom to find something that looked like it. ”
However, the researchers estimated that the wasp probably did not intend to kill with the bizarre seizure structure.
Instead, they have theorized that the wasp injects eggs into the trapped body before freeing it, using the creature as a involuntary host for its eggs. Its larvae then started their life as a parasites in or on the host’s body and probably ended up eating the host completely, said Vilhelmsen. The host was probably a flying insect of a size similar to the wasp, he added.
Similar, but not identical behaviors have been observed among the species of living parasitoids. For example, a group of wasps Known as wasps in cuckoo lay their eggs in the nest of another species of wasp, and the larvae feast on young people of their new hosts once they have hatched.
The amber fossils offer an attractive three -dimensional look at the distant past. In addition plants And flowers,, A dinosaur tailA crabA Found hell, A spider mother and her youngAnd a fireflies were found buried in trees resin globes.
A fossil enthusiast bought the Amber containing Sirenobethylus Charybdis, which comes from the Kachin region of Myanmar near the border with China, several years ago and donated it to the key laboratory of the normal university of normal capital of evolution of insects and environmental changes in 2016, the authors said.
Amber fossils have been one of the most exciting discoveries in paleontology in recent years, but Ethical concerns about the origin of amber of the region has emerged, some paleontologists calling for a moratorium on research on amber from Myanmar after A military coup in 2021.
The Sirenobethylus Charybdis of “Cretaceous.
“This is important because there are about a million known insect species-even with all this living diversity, there are still many unexpected surprises in the fossil file which are beyond the imagination,” said Barden, who was not involved in the study, by email.
However, he said, although plausible, Flytrap’s hypothesis is “a little speculative”.
“There seems to be clear evidence that the abdominal components would have had an amplitude of motion. There are also a certain number of bristles, or hair, which seem to be in the right position to detect hosts and potentially immobilize them,” said Barden.
He said that it is possible that biological structures may have had another objective, such as detecting prey in the soil or perhaps even for the transport of baby wasps.
“Today, thousands of parasitoid wasps species are able to immobilize hosts without abdominal winding. Why were these wasps unable to simply count on their bites or to incorporate their oral pieces into the capture of the host as the living species do? ” Asked Barden.
Vilhelmsen said that a key factor in the interpretation of his fossil colleagues was the location of the egg eggs of the wasp – right next to the trap -shaped structure. However, all the samples of Sirenobethylus Charybdis examined so far are female wasps, and the researchers have therefore not been able to exclude that the structure could have played a role during coupling, according to the study.
“It’s something unique, something I didn’t expect to see, and something I couldn’t even imagine would be found,” said Vilhelmsen. “It’s a 10 out of 10.”