Female mosquitoes are among the most notorious hematophagous (blood-feeding) insects, sometimes causing severe allergic responses. Hematophagy in insects is likely a feeding shift from plant fluids, with the piercing-sucking mouthparts serving as suitable exaptation for piercing vertebrates’ skin. The origins of these habits are mired in an often-poor fossil record for many hematophagous lineages, particularly those of sufficient age, as to give insights into the paleoecological context in which blood feeding first appeared or even to arrive at gross estimates as to when such shifts have occurred. This is certainly the case for mosquitoes, a group estimated molecularly to date back to the Jurassic period. Now, paleontologists have described a new species of mosquito found in 125-million-year-old amber from Lebanon. The males of the new species unexpectedly had piercing mouthparts, armed with sharp mandibles, and were likely hematophagous.
Mosquitoes are approximately 3,600 species of small flies comprising the family Culicidae.
All living — and likely fossil — female mosquitoes are hematophagous and nectarivorous, whereas living species of their sister group, Chaoboridae (phantom midges or glassworms), are nectar feeding.
Thus, a shift from strict nectarivory to partial hematophagy has occurred, but scientists still don’t know whether the earliest mosquitoes were hematophagous or not.
The discovery of two male mosquitoes with piercing mouthparts, preserved in amber from Lebanon, extends the definitive occurrence of the Culicidae family into the Early Cretaceous.
The new specimens represent a new species of mosquitoes, Libanoculex intermedius.
They also represent a new, now-extinct mosquito subfamily, Libanoculicinae.
“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…
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