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Parasitic cockroaches indicate complex states of earliest proved ants

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Abstract

Myrmecophilous and termitophilous interactions likely contributed to the competitive advantage and evolutionary success of eusocial insects, but how these commensal and parasitic relationships originated is unclear due to absence of fossil records. New extinct cockroaches of the still living family Blattidae are reported here from the Cretaceous Myanmar amber (99 Ma) and are the earliest known inhabitants of complex ant nests, demonstrating that this specialised myrmecophily originated shortly after ant eusociality and appeared in the fossil record. Cretaceous stem aposematic Blattidae are known from the amber of Myanmar and Lebanon and we report them here also from the Syrian amber. Concurrent evolution suggests that the collective internal defence of early ants was weak and allowed infiltrations by numerous unrelated organisms, At the same time, the contemporary presence of ant mimicking myrmecomorphs suggests a need for strong external protection against visually hunting predators. Myrmecophily is supported by morphological adaptations (lack of wide fat body and feeding of adult male; short, fossorial legs; shortened cerci; oligomerised antenna; hairy surface structures) and camouflage behaviour, documented by sediment and own feces covering. Moreover the same piece of amber contains ants, ant mimics and other undescribed ant nest-visiting insects as syninclusions. Another species preserved along with two termites is a putative termitophile. Abundant comparatively large parasitic cockroaches influenced Mesozoic tropical forest ecosystems by affecting the early evolution of complex nests of eusocial insects. Rainforest rudiments in South Yunnan yielded observation of analogical still living, formally undescribed species.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Ing. Robert Oružinský, Dr. Mária Kazimírová, Dr. Ľubomír Vidlička, Martin Styan (Bratislava), Prof. Bo Wang (Nanjing) and Dr. Karin Wolfschwenninger (Stuttgart) for technical help and linguistic revision. This work was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the contract no. APVV-0436-12, and by UNESCO-Amba/ MVTS supporting grant of Presidium of the Slovak Academy of Sciences; VEGA 0012-14, 2/0042/18; Literary Fund. This research was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program (B) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB26000000) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41572010, 41622201, 41688103).

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Author notes

  1. Peter Vršanský, Lucia Šmídová, Hemen Sendi contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Zoology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dúbravská cesta 9, 845 06, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Peter Vršanský

  2. Institute of Physics, Research Centre of Quantum Informatics, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dúbravská cesta 9, 845 11, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Peter Vršanský

  3. Earth Science Institute, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dúbravská cesta 9, P.O. BOX 106, 840 05, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Peter Vršanský & Peter Barna

  4. Palaeontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Profsoyuznaya 123, 117868, Moscow, Russia

    Peter Vršanský

  5. State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 210008, China

    Peter Vršanský, Xiaoyin Ren, Xiaojie Lei, Dany Azar & Tong Bao

  6. Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Albertov 6, 128 43, Prague 2, Czech Republic

    Lucia Šmídová

  7. Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University, Illkovičova 6, 84 104, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Hemen Sendi

  8. Käshofen, Germany

    Patrick Müller

  9. Kassel, Germany

    Sieghard Ellenberger

  10. Zhejiang Museum of Natural History, No. 6, West Lake Cultural Square, Hangzhou, 310014, China

    Hao Wu

  11. Natural Sciences Department, Faculty of Science II, Fanar, Lebanese University, PO box 26110217, Fanar – Matn, Lebanon

    Dany Azar

  12. Earth Science Institute, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Ďumbierska 1, 974 01, Banská Bystrica, Slovakia

    Juraj Šurka

  13. Paleoecology Research Group, CAS Menglun, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Mengla, 666303, Yunnan, China

    Tao Su, Weiyudong Deng & Xianhui Shen

  14. Dian Jiang Collection, Zhao Jia Yue Tai, Heshunzhen, Baoshan, 679100, Yunnan, China

    Jun Lv

  15. Steinmann-Institut, Abteilung Paläontologie, Nussalee 8, D-53115, Bonn, Germany

    Tong Bao

  16. Böblingen, Germany

    Günter Bechly

Authors
  1. Peter Vršanský
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  2. Lucia Šmídová
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  3. Hemen Sendi
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  4. Peter Barna
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  5. Patrick Müller
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Contributions

We collected the material (S.E., P.M., D.A., L.J., W.H., B.T.); took the photographs (S.E., P.M., P.B., L.Š., P.V., X.R., X.L.), produced drawings (L.Š., P.B., P.V.), CT (P.B., L.Š., H.S.), descriptions and comparison (P.V., L.Š., P.B., H.S.); observations in the living ecosystem (P.V., T.S., W.D., T.B., X.S.); designed research (P.V.), wrote and edited the paper (P. V., G.B., D.A.) with contributions from all authors.

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Correspondence to Peter Vršanský.

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Vršanský, P., Šmídová, L., Sendi, H. et al. Parasitic cockroaches indicate complex states of earliest proved ants. Biologia 74, 65–89 (2019). https://doi.org/10.2478/s11756-018-0146-y

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