Insect pollination promotes the reproduction and differentiation of plants and is essential in modern terrestrial ecosystems. However, due to the lack of fossil material, little is known about pollinators and their niches before the angiosperm era.
Recently, under the guidance of researcher Wang Bo, Liu Qing and Zhang Qingqing, a "research team on the origin and early evolution of modern terrestrial ecosystems" at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, cooperated with the team of Liu Xingyue of China Agricultural University and the team of Zheng Xiaoting of Linyi University to report 27 specimens of lilyflies, and conducted detailed research on the pollination behavior, chemical communication behavior and camouflage behavior of lilyflies. The results provide a new perspective for reconstructing the ecological relationship between mesozoic pollinators and plants. The study was published online Sept. 17 in Nature Communications.
Since Darwin first noticed the matching length of pollinator moths and orchid tubes in his 1877 book Pollination of Orchid Pollination, many ecologists have reported on the co-evolutionary relationship between the long mouthpieces of living insects and the flower tubes of plants. It is a class of pollinators of the order Puloptera recorded only in the Mesozoic Era, with long-mouthed vessels. 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 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. The length of the mouthparts of different species is between 0.6 and 18 mm, of which the length of the mouthpiece of the frog in Burmese amber is between 0.6 and 3.2 mm, and the length of the mouthpiece of the mesozoic sedimentary rock is between 5 and 18 mm. The results showed that the length of the mouthparts of different species of insects in Myanmar amber had a high degree of differentiation, and the high diversity of mouth organ lengths reflected the diversity of their feeding plants and flower tube lengths, indicating that the ecological niche differentiation of pollinators had occurred before the rapid evolution of angiosperms. Pollination niche differentiation improved pollination efficiency and further promoted the evolution of Cretaceous pollinators and insect-borne plants.
Along with the diversification of pollination forms, the lily has also evolved a unique chemical communication and defense mechanism. 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. In addition, the wings of the lily have special eye spots. These eye spots have an important defensive function in the lismud, usually the larger the individual, the more obvious the lisma spots, the smaller the lismud eye spots are fainter or even disappear.
The presence of sexual type II of antennae and eye spots indicates that lilyflies are highly adaptable and competitive in Mesozoic terrestrial ecosystems. The pollination niche zoning between the lily and the feeding plant further promotes the diversity of the lily. However, it may be the close symbiotic relationship between the lily and its feeding plants, which also became extinct with the decline of feeding plants (possibly mainly gymnosperms) in the Late Cretaceous.
The research was funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
论文信息：liu qing1, lu xiumei1, zhang qingqing1, chen jun, zheng xiaoting, zhang weiwei, liu xingyue*, wang bo* (2018) high niche diversity in mesozoic pollinating lacewings. nature communications, 9: 3793. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-06120-5
Links to papers
Ecological reconstruction of Jurassic and Cretaceous lisbols (Yang Dinghua map)
Litch in Burmese amber
The evolutionary history of the lily
Jurassic and Cretaceous lilyflies
Fossil restoration of lilyflies
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