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Issue: Vol. 5 No. 4: July–August 2022
Type: Short Communication
Published: 2022-08-30
DOI: 10.11646/palaeoentomology.5.4.13
Page range: 395–399
Abstract views: 285
PDF downloaded: 14

The earliest known species of Permeca (Insecta, Mecoptera, Permochoristidae) from the late Guadalupian Yinping Formation of China

State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, and Centre for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
Insecta Mecoptera Permochoristidae

Abstract

Mecoptera are commonly known as scorpionflies, as some mecopterans have bulbous genitals that are upturned, resembling the stinger of scorpions. As one of the most ancient holometabolous orders (Kristensen, 1981; Dunford & Somma, 2008), the stem group of mecopterans can be dated back to the early Permian (Rasnitsyn, 2004). Mecopterans play an important role in our understanding of the origin of fleas. Some Mesozoic giant fleas have been suggested to be derived from extinct long-proboscid mecopterans (Huang et al., 2012), and recent phylogenomic evidence has clearly demonstrated that fleas are nested within Mecoptera (Tihelka et al., 2020). Mecoptera are very abundant in the geological past, with more than 700 species and 210 genera placed in 39 families (Novokshonov et al., 2016; Ren et al., 2019; Wang, 2020). Extant faunas are represented by ca. 700 species and 40 genera assigned to 9 families (Bicha, 2018; Wang, 2020).

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