Wild bee of dinosaur age, belly trap to capture hunting

In an unique and important discovery in the field of insect paleontology, an international team of researchers defined a strange body mechanism about 100 million years ago with a mid -cretic wild bee: a carnivor plant designed to capture and immobilize its propropies.

According to the research, recently published in the magazine BMC BiologyWild bee was first classified in the super family ChrysidoideaBees contain donkeys and ants. However, due to insect features, the authors had to create a new taxonomic family (Sirenobetylidae) Charybdis.

For them, S. Charrybdis It was not predatorHowever, a coinobione parasitoid wild bee, that is, the eggs caught by the abdomen “trap”, but not killing them in insects in or on the insects in the insects. It allows the landlord to continue to live and develop until he grows, changes his physiology and consumes his vital organs and causes his death.

How was the Kretase donkey gathered?

The researchers used Taiping Gao, Lars Vilhelmsen and his colleagues, colleagues from the Başkent, China and Denmark Natural History Museum, and a miniature version of computed tomography. The technology called Micro-BT used x-ray to elaborate 16 examples of species S. Charrybdis.

Fossils, protected in amber and dating back to 98.79 million years, and fossils were collected in the Kachin region in Northern Myanmar. This small primitive donkey has a abdominal apparatus consisting of a lower structure similar to twelve hairs, consisting of three chips similar to a Dioniaia.

In a press release, CO -Euthor Lars Vilhelmsen, working from the Danish Nature History Museum, said that when analyzing the first example, he already noticed expansion at the end of the abdomen, but that he thought it was a amber air balloon. “But then I looked at some examples and then I went back to the first. In fact, this was part of the animal. Ves.

Why did the donkey just caught the hunt but didn’t kill?

For Vilhelmsen, he is not likely to kill the strange imprisonment. Instead, the wild bee introduced his eggs to the body of the caught hunt before releasing him and turned him into an involuntary landlord. The larvae were born in or on the host’s body, and finally swallowed it completely.

A similar but not the same behavior may be observed in the existing parasitoid donkeys. They are called Cuco donkeys, because they leave their eggs in the nests of other donkeys or host insects, like a bird that puts their eggs in the nests of other birds. Cuco-Capac larvae, They swallow the host eggs or larvae and still nourish their provisions.

Amber -Coronal Fossils have recently been considered very important and exciting discoveries for paleontology. However, paleontologists have encountered an ethical dilemma in science: there are concerns about whether the trade in this amber will finance the military regime that came to power in Myanmar with a non -democratic coup.

What is the importance of Kretase’s exploration of strange wild bees?

In an interview Cnn, Amber Fossil Specialist Phil Barden from New Jersey Technology Institute S. Charrybdis It is part of a list of insects that have been “out of the boundaries of the creatures that are alive today”. From the bar that does not participate in the study, the hypothesis about the speculative abdominal trap despite being reasonable.

He observed the abdominal structure of the old wild bee in detail and accepted that the crop would have a so -called movement capacity and the hairs that could be used to hunt and make the huhlers hunting and immobilized. However, these structures may have other functions, he says from the bar, such as detecting hunt on the ground or carrying young donkeys.

Vilhelmsen emphasizes the location of the posture organ of women in turn. S. Charrybdis As an important point for the interpretation of researchers, near the “trap .. “This is a unique thing, something I never expected, and something I can’t even imagine that it will be found. 10th in 10th.”

If this strange wild bee is already like this xenomorphine of Alien, wait until Yukon learns the discovery of these five glacial periods made on Permafrost. . Follow here in Tecmundo.