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Issue: Vol. 9 No. 2: 29 Apr. 2026
Type: Article
Published: 2026-04-29
DOI: 10.11646/palaeoentomology.9.2.8
Page range: 160-172
Abstract views: 103
PDF downloaded: 51

A comparison of insect disarticulation during simulated transport and implications for fossil preservation and identification

University of Toronto Mississauga, Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences, 3359 Mississauga Road, Mississauga, ON, L5L 1C6, Canada
University of Toronto Mississauga, Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences, 3359 Mississauga Road, Mississauga, ON, L5L 1C6, Canada
University of Tennessee Martin, Department of Agriculture, Geoscience, and Natural Resources, 554 University Street, Martin, TN, 38238, United States of America
Oxford University Museum of Natural History, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PW, UK
University of British Columbia, Beaty Biodiversity Museum, Vancouver Campus, 2212 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4 Canada
University of Toronto Mississauga, Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences, 3359 Mississauga Road, Mississauga, ON, L5L 1C6, Canada
Taphonomy Decay Experiments Ants Bees Beetles Butterflies Crickets Damselflies Tumbling

Abstract

The fossil record represents a small fraction of what lived in ancient ecosystems. Transport, the carrying of organisms from their living environment to their burial environment, remains an enigmatic part of the fossilization process. We analyzed the effects of transport on the preservation potential of a wide variety of insects with different morphologies: Camponotus spp. (carpenter ants), Bombus spp. (bumblebees), Polyommatus spp. (butterflies), Teleogryllus oceanicus (oceanic house crickets), Enallagma spp. (blue damselflies) and Coccinellidae (ladybird beetles). Live specimens were placed in rotary tumblers with water and silt-sized silica sediment for 48 hours. Specimen vitality, buoyancy, and articulation were recorded every two hours to determine the relative preservation potential of these insects. We find that ants, bumblebees, crickets, and ladybird beetles are less likely to disarticulate to unidentifiable degrees—even under long transport times. In contrast, butterflies and damselflies disarticulate relatively rapidly. These results suggest that the more robust group of insects could be overrepresented in environments that would contain many transported specimens, such as fluvial, deltaic, and coastal marine.

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