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Termite colonies from mid-Cretaceous Myanmar demonstrate their early eusocial lifestyle in damp wood

Insect eusociality is characterized by cooperative brood care, reproductive division of labour and multiple generations of adults within a colony. The morphological specializations of the different termite castes from Burmese amber were recently reported, indicating the termites possessed advanced s...

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Autores principales: Zhao, Zhipeng, Yin, Xiangchu, Shih, Chungkun, Gao, Taiping, Ren, Dong
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8288961/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34692054
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwz141
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author Zhao, Zhipeng
Yin, Xiangchu
Shih, Chungkun
Gao, Taiping
Ren, Dong
author_facet Zhao, Zhipeng
Yin, Xiangchu
Shih, Chungkun
Gao, Taiping
Ren, Dong
author_sort Zhao, Zhipeng
collection PubMed
description Insect eusociality is characterized by cooperative brood care, reproductive division of labour and multiple generations of adults within a colony. The morphological specializations of the different termite castes from Burmese amber were recently reported, indicating the termites possessed advanced sociality in the mid-Cretaceous. Unfortunately, all the reported Cretaceous termites are individually preserved, which does not cover the behaviours of the cooperative brood care and multiple generations of adults in the nests of the Cretaceous termites. Herein, we report three eusocial aggregations from colonies of the oldest known Stolotermitidae, Cosmotermesgen. nov., in 100 Ma mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber. One large aggregation, comprising 8 soldiers, 56 workers/pseudergates and 25 immatures of different instars, additionally presents the behaviours of cooperative brood care and overlapping generations. Furthermore, taphonomic evidence indicates Cosmotermes most probably dwelled in damp/rotting wood, which provides a broader horizon of the early societies and ecology of the eusocial Cosmotermes.
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spelling pubmed-82889612021-10-21 Termite colonies from mid-Cretaceous Myanmar demonstrate their early eusocial lifestyle in damp wood Zhao, Zhipeng Yin, Xiangchu Shih, Chungkun Gao, Taiping Ren, Dong Natl Sci Rev Research Article Insect eusociality is characterized by cooperative brood care, reproductive division of labour and multiple generations of adults within a colony. The morphological specializations of the different termite castes from Burmese amber were recently reported, indicating the termites possessed advanced sociality in the mid-Cretaceous. Unfortunately, all the reported Cretaceous termites are individually preserved, which does not cover the behaviours of the cooperative brood care and multiple generations of adults in the nests of the Cretaceous termites. Herein, we report three eusocial aggregations from colonies of the oldest known Stolotermitidae, Cosmotermesgen. nov., in 100 Ma mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber. One large aggregation, comprising 8 soldiers, 56 workers/pseudergates and 25 immatures of different instars, additionally presents the behaviours of cooperative brood care and overlapping generations. Furthermore, taphonomic evidence indicates Cosmotermes most probably dwelled in damp/rotting wood, which provides a broader horizon of the early societies and ecology of the eusocial Cosmotermes. Oxford University Press 2020-02 2019-09-13 /pmc/articles/PMC8288961/ /pubmed/34692054 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwz141 Text en © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of China Science Publishing & Media Ltd. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Zhao, Zhipeng
Yin, Xiangchu
Shih, Chungkun
Gao, Taiping
Ren, Dong
Termite colonies from mid-Cretaceous Myanmar demonstrate their early eusocial lifestyle in damp wood
title Termite colonies from mid-Cretaceous Myanmar demonstrate their early eusocial lifestyle in damp wood
title_full Termite colonies from mid-Cretaceous Myanmar demonstrate their early eusocial lifestyle in damp wood
title_fullStr Termite colonies from mid-Cretaceous Myanmar demonstrate their early eusocial lifestyle in damp wood
title_full_unstemmed Termite colonies from mid-Cretaceous Myanmar demonstrate their early eusocial lifestyle in damp wood
title_short Termite colonies from mid-Cretaceous Myanmar demonstrate their early eusocial lifestyle in damp wood
title_sort termite colonies from mid-cretaceous myanmar demonstrate their early eusocial lifestyle in damp wood
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8288961/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34692054
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwz141
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