Modern hydrophilid clades present and widespread in the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous (Coleoptera: Hydrophiloidea: Hydrophilidae)

Abstract

We present a summary of the fossil evidence documenting the worldwide occurrence of the family Hydrophilidae (Insecta: Coleoptera: Polyphaga: Hydrophiloidea) in the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous. We present the first known fossils of the family from the Mesozoic, being c. 100 Myr older than the fossil record available until now. Two Late Jurassic fossils are documented: Protochares brevipalpis gen. nov., sp. nov. from the Talbragar Fish Bed (New South Wales, Australia) and ‘Mesosperchus’ schultzi Ponomarenko, 1985 from Solnhofen (Bavaria, Germany). The occurrence of the Hydrophilidae in the Early Cretaceous is documented by six species, all of which may be already assigned to modern subfamilies/tribes: Baissalarva hydrobioides gen. nov., sp. nov. from the Baissa outcrops (Buryat Republic, Russia) and Cretoxenus australis gen. nov., sp. nov. from Koonwarra outcrops (Victoria, Australia) are both assigned to the tribe Hydrobiusini (Hydrophilinae); Alegorius yixianus gen. nov., sp. nov. and Alegorius sp. from the Yixian Formation (Liaoning, China) may represent the Acidocerinae or Enochrinae, Hydroyixia elongata gen. nov., sp. nov. and H. latissima sp. nov. from the same locality are assigned to the Acidocerinae. The phylogenetic position of Baissalarva hydrobioides is also tested by a phylogenetic analysis. The presence of extant clades (Hydrophilinae: Hydrobiusini, Acidocerinae) in the Early Cretaceous and the wide distribution of the Hydrobiusini in both Gondwana and Laurasia at the same time suggests that the principal extant clades of the Hydrophilidae are at least of Early–Middle Jurassic origin. © 2014 The Linnean Society of London

Cretohisteridae, a new beetle family from the Early Cretaceous of China, and its implications for the early evolution of the basal group of Histeroidea (Coleoptera)

“…The discovery of a new family of Histeroidea from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation, with a combination of many plesiomorphic and derived morphological characters, provides an interesting picture of palaeodiversity of the early Histeroidea, and supports the basal position of Sphaeritidae in this superfamily. This finding, together with Jurassic fossils attributable to the sister group Hydrophiloidea (Ponomarenko, ; Prokin et al ., ; Fikáček et al ., ; Fikáček et al ., ) and already diverse fossils of Histeridae in Burmese amber, provides support for the Late Triassic age of origin for Histeroidea as advocated by Toussaint et al ().…”

The peril of dating beetles

“…However, the oldest fossils of the modern hydrophiloid families Helophoridae, Spercheidae and Hydrophilidae are already known from the Late Jurassic ( c . 145–155 Ma; Prokin, ; Fikáček et al , , , ). Increased congruence between estimates of family‐level divergence times in our analysis and the fossil record were expected, as we mainly used fossils reliably assigned to the deeper nodes of modern clades (subfamilies, tribes, genera) to calibrate the divergence dates at family/subfamily levels.…”

“…A more detailed justification after Parham et al 's () criteria is provided in F ile S 3. References: 1, Kirejtshuk et al (); 2, Crowson (); 3, Tan et al (); 4, Kirejtshuk & Poinar (); 5, Ge et al (); 6, Prokin et al (2013a); 7, Cassola & Werner, (); 8, Cai et al (); 9, Cai et al (); 10, Fikáček et al (); 11, Nikolajev & Ren (); 12, Nikolajev & Ren (); 13, Bai et al (); 14, Jin et al (); 15, Pan et al (); 16, Cai et al (); 17, Peris et al (); 18, Prokin & Ren, (); 19, Cai et al (); 20, Peris et al (); 21, Peris et al (); 22, Kirejtshuk & Nel (); 23, Kirejtshuk et al (); 24, Perrichot et al (); 25, Batelka et al (); 26, Falin & Engel (); 27, Engel & Grimaldi (); 28, Liu et al (); 29, Grimaldi & Engel (); 30, Kirejtshuk et al (); 31, Liu et al (); 32, Yu et al (); 33, Cai et al (); 34, Wang et al (); 35, Poinar (); 36, Legalov (); 37, Kirejtshuk et al ().…”

Clade Age and Diversification Rate Variation Explain Disparity in Species Richness among Water Scavenger Beetle (Hydrophilidae) Lineages

“…We used the following fossils to calibrate the tree (see online supplementary material for more details on fossil ages and the calibration schemes): Protochares brevipalpis (Late Jurassic, Australia) and Baissalarva hydrobioides (Early Cretaceous, Russia) [33] Hydrobius titan (actually belonging to the genus Sperchopsis , Late Eocene, USA; Fikáček et al, unpubl. data); Limnoxenus olenus (Latest Oligocene, France) [34]; Anacaena paleodominica from Dominican amber (Early Miocene, Dominican Republic) [35], Helochares ( Hydrobaticus ) sp.…”