A new marsh beetle from mid-Cretaceous amber of northern Myanmar (Coleoptera: Scirtidae)

Yan-Da Li; Rafał Ruta; Erik Tihelka; Zhen-Hua Liu; Di-Ying Huang; Chen-Yang Cai

doi:10.1038/s41598-022-16822-y

A new marsh beetle from mid-Cretaceous amber of northern Myanmar (Coleoptera: Scirtidae)

Sci Rep. 2022 Aug 4;12(1):13403. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-16822-y.

Authors

Yan-Da Li¹, Rafał Ruta², Erik Tihelka³, Zhen-Hua Liu^{4

5}, Di-Ying Huang¹, Chen-Yang Cai^{6

7}

Affiliations

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 Department of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Taxonomy, University of Wrocław, Przybyszewskiego 65, 51-148, Wrocław, Poland.
³ School of Earth Sciences, Life Sciences Building, University of Bristol, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol, BS8 1TQ, UK.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China.
⁵ Australian National Insect Collection, CSIRO National Research Collections Australia, GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia.
⁶ 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. cycai@nigpas.ac.cn.
⁷ School of Earth Sciences, Life Sciences Building, University of Bristol, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol, BS8 1TQ, UK. cycai@nigpas.ac.cn.

Abstract

As one of the earliest-diverging lineage of the megadiverse beetle suborder Polyphaga, marsh beetles (Scirtidae) are crucial for reconstructing the ancestor of all polyphagan beetles and the ecomorphological underpinnings of their remarkable evolutionary success. The phylogeny of marsh beetles has nonetheless remained challenging to infer, not least because of their fragmentary Mesozoic fossil record. Here we describe a new scirtid beetle genus and species, Varcalium lawrencei gen. et sp. nov., preserving internal tissue, from Albian-Cenomanian Kachin amber (ca 99 Ma), representing the second member of this family known from the deposit. Based on a formal morphological phylogenetic analysis, Varcalium is recovered within the crown-group of Scirtinae, forming a clade with other genera that possess subocular carinae. The finding suggests that the crown-group of Scirtinae has already diversified by the mid-Cretaceous.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Amber*
Animals
Coleoptera* / anatomy & histology
Fossils
Myanmar
Phylogeny
Wetlands

Substances

Amber