Cretaceous Ji LiJing comes with "antenna" remote "dating"

Use ultra-long mouthpieces to collect powder, bring your own biological "antenna", and "make friends" remotely... On the 17th, Nature Communications published the research results of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences online, describing to the world the "superpower" possessed by the lismud 100 million years ago, thus providing a new perspective for reconstructing the ecological relationship between mesozoic pollinators and plants.

Insect pollination promotes the reproduction and differentiation of plants and is essential in modern terrestrial ecosystems. Known as the "butterfly of the Mesozoic Era", it was one of the pink maidens of the plant overlord gymnosperms more than 100 million years ago. But now that the insect-pollinated gymnosperms and butterflies are extinct, coupled with the lack of fossils, scientists know very little about them. The redflies found this time are derived from Burmese amber in the middle Cretaceous period and the Early Cretaceous Rehe biota in China and the Yanliao biota in the Jurassic.

It is a pollinator that lived only in the Mesozoic Era and has a long mouthpiece. Its mouthparts and the flower tubes that feed on plants have formed morphological adaptations in the long-term evolution, that is, the length of the insect mouthparts is similar to the length of the plant flower tubes it pollinates, so the length of the mouthpiece of the lily provides key evidence for reconstructing the pollinator ecological niche. The mouthparts of the different species of lilys found this time range in length from 0.6 mm to 18 mm. This indicates that the niche differentiation of pollinators has appeared during the period of gymnosperms flourishing. Pollination niche differentiation improved pollination efficiency and further promoted the evolution of Cretaceous pollinators and insect-borne plants.

In this study, it is also confirmed for the first time that Mesozoic insects have the ability to communicate chemically over long distances. The antennae of burmese males are rarely ctenophoric structures among Mesozoic insects, while females are candibal or filamentous. Ctenophoric antennae increase the surface area of the antennae and the sensitivity of the sensor, enhancing the ability of males to sense sex hormones released by females, suggesting that crets may have been able to communicate chemically over long distances.

Because these butterflies have carefully changed their feeding structure, they can only feed on pollen from certain gymnosperms. In the Cenozoic Era, the supremacy of gymnosperms was replaced by angiosperms, and these butterflies also disappeared and became extinct.

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