An early and mysterious histerid inquiline from Cretaceous Burmese amber (Coleoptera, Histeridae)

Abstract

We describe a new genus and species of Histeridae from Upper Cretaceous Burmese amber, Amplectister tenax Caterino & Maddison, gen. & sp. n. This species represents the third known Cretaceous histerid, which, like the others, is highly distinct and cannot easily be placed to subfamily. It exhibits prosternal characters in common with Saprininae, but other characters appear inconsistent with this possibility. The abdominal venter is strongly concave, and the hind legs are enlarged and modified for grasping. We hypothesize that this represents the earliest example in Histeridae of modifications for phoresy on social insects.

A Mesozoic clown beetle myrmecophile (Coleoptera: Histeridae)

“…An ancient association between histerids and ants is further suggested by inquiline-like morphology in two other Cretaceous clown beetle fossils (Caterino et al, 2015; Caterino and Maddison, 2018), although unlike Promyrmister , the taxonomic affinities of these specimens are ambiguous and they are not definitive members of wholly symbiotic lineages. We infer that Haeteriinae was a relatively diverse clade by at least the beginning of the Upper Cretaceous, and likely originated and began undergoing basal cladogenesis very soon after the inferred Early Cretaceous emergence of ant eusociality (Barden and Grimaldi, 2016; Grimaldi and Agosti, 2000; Barden, 2016; Brady et al, 2006; Moreau and Bell, 2013; Borowiec et al, 2017a).…”

Phylogeny and evolution of Mesozoic and extant lineages of Histeridae (Coleoptera), with discovery of a new subfamily Antigracilinae from the Lower Cretaceous

“…To date, the oldest fossils assigned to family Histeridae are from Upper Cretaceous, nearly 99 Ma, Burmese amber inclusions: † Pantostictus burmanicus Poinar and Brown, 2009, † Cretonthophilus tuberculatus Caterino et al, 2015, † Amplectister tenax Caterino and Maddison, 2018 and † Promyrmister kistneri Zhou et al, 2019. The first three taxa are morphologically unusual and only Cretonthophilus has been placed provisionally in a subfamily, sharing costae on pronotum and elytra with recent Onthophilinae.…”

The first Eocene species of Bacanius (Coleoptera: Histeridae: Dendrophilinae) from Rovno amber

“…At present, 20 fossil histerid species are described [Heer, 1862;Theobald, 1935;Chatzimanolis et al, 2006;Caterino et al, 2015;Caterino, Maddison, 2018;Poinar et al, 2009;Alekseev, 2016;Degalier et al, 2019;Zhou et al, 2019;Jiang et al, 2020]. Several extinct species are reported, but not described [Klebs, 1910, Duncan et al, 1998.…”