New genus of the tribe Ceutorhynchini (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) from the late Oligocene of Enspel, southwestern Germany, with a remark on the role of weevils in the ancient food web

Abstract

Abstract. The new weevil genus Igneonasus gen. nov. (type species: I. rudolphi sp. nov.) of the tribe Ceutorhynchini (Curculionidae: Conoderinae: Ceutorhynchitae) is described from the late Oligocene of Fossillagerstätte Enspel, Germany. The new genus differs from the similar genus Stenocarus Thomson, 1859 in the anterior margin of the pronotum, which is not raised, a pronotum without tubercles on the sides, and a femur without teeth. This weevil is the largest representative of this supertribe and the first fossil Curculionidae species described from the paleolake Enspel. In this ancient ecosystem, weevils were at least sometimes an important food resource for the cyprinid fish Palaeorutilus enspelensis.

A hangingfly (Mecoptera, Bittacidae) from the late Oligocene Fossillagerstätte Enspel, Westerwald (SW Germany)

“…Although we cannot exclude the possibility that further hangingflies remain unrecognized among the more than 12,000 arthropod finds from this locality, these insects are clearly exceedingly rare at Enspel. The same is true, for example, with respect to cockroaches (Vršanský et al, 2021), whereas winged specimens of ants, bibionid flies, and weevils are the most abundant insects at Enspel (Wedmann et al, 2010;Legalov & Poschmann, 2020;Jessen, 2020;Skartveit & Wedmann, 2021). Both nymphs and adults of Odonata are moderately rare at Enspel, but show a diversity that can be considered typical for Cenozoic lakes (Brockhaus et al, 2020;Nel et al, 2020).…”

CeutorhynchusGermar (Coleoptera, Curculionidae) as proxy for Eocene core Brassicaceae: first record of the genus from Rovno amber

“…In the late Eocene, a species of the extinct genus Baltocoeliodes Legalov and Bukejs, 2018, three species of Ceutorhynchus (Legalov, 2013, 2016b; Legalov and Bukejs, 2018), and one species of Rhinoncus Schoenherr, 1825 (Phytobiini), are known from Baltic amber (Klebs, 1910), and one species of the tribe Cnemogonini is known from Florissant, Colorado, USA (Scudder, 1893). Ceutorhynchini species not belonging to the genus Ceutorhynchus are also described from Florissant (Scudder, 1893; Wickham, 1916), the Eocene/Oligocene boundary of France (Förster, 1891), the late Oligocene of Germany (Legalov and Poschmann, 2020), and the Neogene of France (Piton and Théobald, 1935). A species of the tribe Phytobiini is known from the Oligocene of Germany (Théobald, 1937).…”