Affiliation:
1. State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, and Centre for Excellence in Life and Palaeoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, People's Republic of China
2. Section Entomology, Naturalis Biodiversity Centre, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
Abstract
Brood care enhances offspring fitness and survival by providing protection or feeding through parents (commonly by females). It has evolved independently multiple times in animals, e.g. mammals, birds, dinosaurs and arthropods, especially various lineages of insects, and has significant implications for understanding the emergence of sociality of insects. However, few fossil insects document such an ephemeral behaviour directly. New exceptional fossils of the water boatman
Karataviella popovi
from the Middle–Late Jurassic Daohugou biota (
ca
163.5 Ma, northeastern China), with adult females bearing clutches of eggs on their left mesotibia, provide a unique brooding strategy (asymmetric egg-carrying behaviour) unknown in all extinct and extant insects. Our discovery represents the earliest direct evidence of brood care among insects, pushing back by more than 38 million years, indicating that relevant adaptations associated with maternal investment of insects can be traced back to at least the Middle–Late Jurassic, and highlighting the existence of diverse brooding strategies in Mesozoic insects. In addition, our discovery reveals that a specialized trawl-like filter-capture apparatus of
K
.
popovi
probably represents pre-adaptions originally used for trapping coeval anostracan (fairy shrimp) eggs for food.
Funder
Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
National Natural Science Foundation of China
Subject
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Environmental Science,General Immunology and Microbiology,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Medicine
Cited by
1 articles.
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1. The earliest known brood care in insects;Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences;2022-07-13