It was a mosquito filled with dinosaur blood and encased in amber that helped bring the fictional world to life. Jurassic Park In life. While real-world insects sticking to sticky materials won’t lead to dangerous dinosaur parks, they can give scientists a glimpse into the insects’ past shapes and behavior. A 38-million-year-old pair of termites trapped in tree resin in the midst of mating behavior is helping scientists understand the mating behavior of extinct insects.This finding is detailed in the study Posted on March 5th Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The two termites are an extinct species called electrotermes affinis (E. Affinis) And the discovery of this fossil was a bit of luck. Study co-author Aleš Buček, an entomologist at the Czech Academy of Sciences, found the amber fragment in an online shop for fossil collectors.
“Termite fossils are very common, but this piece was unique in that it included a pair,” Buczek said. stated in a statement. “I’ve seen hundreds of fossils with trapped termites, but I’ve never seen a pair of termites.”
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Buczek purchased the fossil, and a team from Japan’s Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) Evolutionary Genomics Unit used X-ray micro-CT to examine the insect in detail.
“It wasn’t actually easy to identify the termite species because there was a bubble in front of a key part of the termite’s body,” says study co-author and OIST postdoctoral fellow Simon Herremans. stated in a statement.
The scan revealed which species the termite belonged to, and also revealed that the captured termites were a female and a male lying side by side. The female’s mouthparts were touching the tip of the male’s abdomen. This arrangement was familiar to researchers because modern termites engage in a mating behavior called tandem running. Insects exhibit coordinated movements to sustain themselves while exploring new nest sites.
![Two termites stand in a vertical line, the male behind the female.](https://www.popsci.com/uploads/2024/03/08/tandem-run.png?auto=webp&optimize=high&width=100)
However, the fossilized pair irregular side-by-side arrangement It was also noticeable in the amber. Pairs are usually observed lying behind each other. The researchers reasoned that because preservation in amber is not an instantaneous process, it disrupts the termites’ normal mating behavior. Their positions are then shifted while encased in highly sticky tree resin. To test this hypothesis, they simulated the process in the lab.
“Our approach focused on how fossils are created and how behavior changes during insect death,” said study co-author and Auburn University entomologist Water. Nobuaki Moto says: stated in a statement.
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They observed mating pairs of termites and found that even if the leading individual became trapped in a sticky surface, the trailing individual did not escape or abandon its partner. Instead, they roamed around them, also stuck in positions like termites trapped in amber.
“When a pair encounters a predator, they usually run away, but I think the sticky ground means they don’t realize the danger and become trapped,” Mizumoto says.
The researchers say this new method, which recreates the process of getting stuck in tree resin, allows them to analyze the behavior of extinct species with unprecedented precision. To the past,” Buczek and Mizumoto said.