Preserved in mid-Cretaceous tree resin, a 98-million-year-old praying mantis discovered in what is now Myanmar features unique leaf-like outgrowths on its abdomen.
Researchers have named the fossil insect Folimantis hyalinala in a paper published in the journal New Phytologist. The genus name translates to leaf mantis, while the species designation refers to the glass-like transparency of the creature’s wings.
The insect’s abdomen bears an uncanny resemblance to Selaginella grimaldii, an extinct clubmoss species known from amber specimens found in the same region. “Though the mimicry relationship between insects and plants has evolved over at least 200 million years, reliable fossil examples of insect-plant mimicry are scarce,” paleoentomologist Hongru Yang and colleagues wrote.
“The mimicry style of F. hyalinala with Selaginella has never been reported before, and there are no species that mimic Selaginella among modern Mantodea,” Yang and colleagues wrote in the study, as reported by ScienceAlert.
When the specimen lived, flowering plants had not yet taken over, prompting the insect’s body to evolve leaf resemblances instead of floral disguises seen in modern species like the Southeast Asian orchid mantis. Individuals resembling their host plants gained an advantage in catching prey while avoiding predators, while the plants benefited from protection against herbivorous insects.
While modern plant-mimicking mantises display foliar features across multiple body parts, Folimantis hyalinala bears them solely on its abdomen. Researchers suggest this pattern implies that plant mimicry may have originated at the rear of the insect, with modifications to the thorax and wings developing later.
The fossil specimen was acquired in 2015 by collector Fangyuan Xia, who donated it later that year to the insect evolution lab at Capital Normal University in Beijing. Myanmar instituted a ban on fossil exports in 2015, though amber-embedded specimens inhabit a legal gray area.
Amber specimens found in the same region as the Folimantis hyalinala fossil have been used to identify the extinct plant Selaginella grimaldii. Following a military coup, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology issued a “hard moratorium on the publication of all fossil specimens in amber obtained from sources in Myanmar after January 2021.”
Earlier coverage: Stepwise Feather Evolution Revealed by Longest 3D Amber Specimen
