Timing the Radiations of Leaf Beetles: Hispines on Gingers from Latest Cretaceous to Recent

Stereotyped feeding damage attributable solely to rolled-leaf hispine beetles is documented on latest Cretaceous and early Eocene ginger leaves from North Dakota and Wyoming. Hispine beetles (6000 extant species) therefore evolved at least 20 million years earlier than suggested by insect body fossi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2000-07, Vol.289 (5477), p.291-294
Main Authors: Wilf, Peter, Labandeira, Conrad C., Kress, W. John, Staines, Charles L., Windsor, Donald M., Allen, Ashley L., Johnson, Kirk R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Angiosperms
Animals
Beetles
Biological Evolution
Chrysomelidae
Coleoptera - classification
Coleoptera - physiology
Drilling
Earth sciences
Earth, ocean, space
Environmental aspects
Evolution
Exact sciences and technology
Family (Sociological Unit)
Feeding Behavior
Fossils
Ginger
Hispinae
Infestation
Insects
Invertebrate paleontology
Land Settlement
Oceans
Organic Chemistry
Paleontology
Phylogeny
Phytophagous insects
Plant Leaves
Plants, Medicinal
Species
Zingiber officinale - classification
Zingiber officinale - parasitology
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Summary:Stereotyped feeding damage attributable solely to rolled-leaf hispine beetles is documented on latest Cretaceous and early Eocene ginger leaves from North Dakota and Wyoming. Hispine beetles (6000 extant species) therefore evolved at least 20 million years earlier than suggested by insect body fossils, and their specialized associations with gingers and ginger relatives are ancient and phylogenetically conservative. The latest Cretaceous presence of these relatively derived members of the hyperdiverse leaf-beetle clade (Chrysomelidae, more than 38,000 species) implies that many of the adaptive radiations that account for the present diversity of leaf beetles occurred during the Late Cretaceous, contemporaneously with the ongoing rapid evolution of their angiosperm hosts.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.289.5477.291