100-million-year-old amber discovered containing 'insects pretending to be ants'

Chinese scientists have discovered a prehistoric insect from Cretaceous amber that shows the earliest ant-mimicking behavior.

Morphological simulation of larvae (A) and adults (B) of the pseudo-ant organism in the study.

In a report last week, the research team from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology said they had collected more than a dozen specimens of anthill insects from various countries such as China, the US, and Germany. , Slovakiacho and Myanmar, the highlight of which is the Cretaceous amber specimen containing fossils still in the form of larvae.

It is 3 to 5mm long, with thin appendages, very similar to the antennae and legs of a primitive family of ants that became extinct in the middle of the Cretaceous period, the Alienopteridae.

Comparison of fossil insect pseudo-antler (left) with fossil Alienopteridae.

"What's interesting is that this creature changed its target of mimicry as it got older. The adults grew wings so they couldn't act as wingless ants anymore, instead, they started mimicking wasps. ", said lead researcher Wang Bo.

Dating back about 100 million years, this is the earliest evidence of myrmecomorphy in animals, up to 50 million years earlier than previously thought by paleontologists.

Myrmecomorphy is the phenomenon in which animals mimic ants morphologically and behaviorally to deceive predators or prey. The arthropods are the most common pseudo-ant organisms. Some of the mimics are so similar that scientists misclassify them.

The study details have been published in the journal Earth-Science Reviews with support from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.