Fossil Record 24(2): 445-453, doi: 10.5194/fr-24-445-2022
The first xiphydriid wood wasp in Cretaceous amber (Hymenoptera: Xiphydriidae) and a potential association with Cycadales
expand article infoJia Gao‡, Michael S. Engel§|, Friðgeir Grímsson#, Lei Gu‡, Dong Ren‡, Taiping Gao¤
‡ College of Life Sciences and Academy for Multidisciplinary Studies, Capital Normal University, 105 Xisanhuanbeilu, Haidian District, Beijing 100048, China§ University of Kansas, Natural History Museum, Lawrence, United States of America| American Museum of Natural History, New York, United States of America¶ University of Kansas, Lawrence# Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research, University of Vienna, Rennweg 14, 1030 Vienna, Austria¤ 105 Xisanhuanbeilu, Beijing, China
© Jia Gao, Michael S. Engel, Friðgeir Grímsson, Lei Gu, Dong Ren, Taiping Gao.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Gao J, Engel MS, Grímsson F, Gu L, Ren D, Gao T (2022) The first xiphydriid wood wasp in Cretaceous amber (Hymenoptera: Xiphydriidae) and a potential association with Cycadales. Fossil Record 24(2): 445-453. https://doi.org/10.5194/fr-24-445-2022
Open Access
Abstract

A new genus and species of fossil wood wasp is describedand figured from mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber, representing the firstoccurrence of the family Xiphydriidae in the fossil record. Paraxiphydria resinata gen. etsp. nov. exhibits typical apomorphies of the family including a generallycylindrical body, elongate neck and dome-shaped head. Nonetheless, owing toa unique combination of traits including features hitherto unknown amongspecies of the family, the genus is classified within a separate subfamily,Paraxiphydriinae subfam. nov. A key is presented to thesuprageneric groups of Xiphydriidae. The newly described species is thefirst fossil xiphydriid wood wasp, extends the occurrence of Xiphydriidaeinto the mid-Cretaceous and adds to the known diversity of features in thefamily. Lastly, the simplification of wing venation and hypotheses ofhost-plant affiliations of early xiphydriids are discussed. We evaluatepollen associated with the wasp, assign it to the genus Cycadopites and concludethat an affiliation to the Cycadales is most likely. Article and nomenclatural acts are registered in ZooBank (http://zoobank.org/, last access: 15 December 2021), with the following life science identifier (LSID) (reference): urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:DA80920E-E94B-4A8E-A817-077FA7BD7D69.