Scorpionflies push back earliest pollination

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Insects called scorpion flies may have slurped the nectar of ferns, conifers and other gymnosperm plants through long, tube-like snouts, well before the evolution of flowering plants and the insects that pollinate them, researchers report in the Nov. 5 issue of Science. The coevolution and diversification of the flowering plants, or angiosperms, and the bees, wasps and other major insects that pollinate them is one of the classic stories of evolutionary biology. This process took place during the late Cretaceous period, about 99.6 to 65.5 million years ago. As a related Perspective article explains, scientists have generally assumed that although animal pollination may predate the evolution of flowering plants, it was rare and unspecialized compared to what followed in the late Cretaceous. However, Dong Ren and colleagues now show that three families of scorpionflies had specialized mouthparts for feeding on the nectar of gymnosperms, as early as the Middle Jurassic, roughly 160 million years ago. The authors analyzed the head and mouthpart structures of eleven species of Eurasian scorpionflies, which appeared to belong to three extinct, closely related families during a 62 million-year interval from the Middle Jurassic to the Early Cretaceous. These insects had long, tubular mouthparts that were likely used to suck out pollen-rich plant fluids, and the insects may have in turn pollinated the plants, the authors suggest.

Article #16: "A Probable Pollination Mode Before Angiosperms: Eurasian, Long-Proboscid Scorpionflies," by D. Ren; C. Shih at Capital Normal University in Beijing, China; C.C. Labandeira; J.A. Santiago-Blay; M.A.V. Logan; C.L. Hotton; D. Dilcher at Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC; C.C. Labandeira at University of Maryland in College Park, MD; J.A. Santiago-Blay at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC; A. Rasnitsyn; A. Bashkuev at Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Russia; A. Rasnitsyn at Natural History Museum in London, UK; C.L. Hotton at National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, MD; D. Dilcher at University of Florida in Gainesville, FL.