Earliest-Known Fossil Mosquito Suggests Males Were Bloodsuckers Too
Published:06 Mar.2024 Source:Cell Press
“Lebanese amber is, to date, the oldest amber with intensive biological inclusions, and it is a very important material as its formation is contemporaneous with the appearance and beginning of radiation of flowering plants, with all what follows of co-evolution between pollinators and flowering plants,” says Dany Azar of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Lebanese University.
“Molecular dating suggested that the family Culicidae arose during the Jurassic, but previously the oldest record was mid-Cretaceous,” says André Nel of the National Museum of Natural History of Paris (Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle de Paris). “Here we have one from the early Cretaceous, about 30 million years before.”
The Culicidae family of arthropods includes more than 3 000 species of mosquitoes. The new findings suggest that male mosquitoes in the past fed on blood as well, according to the researchers. They also help to narrow the “ghost-lineage gap” for mosquitoes, they say. In the new study, Azar, Nel, Diying Huang, and Michael S. Engel describe two male mosquitoes with piercing mouthparts, including an exceptionally sharp, triangular mandible and elongated structure with small, tooth-like denticles.