from the dead-but-still-looking-good dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
When trying to better the odds for survival, a major dilemma that many animals face is dispersal—being able to pick up and leave to occupy new lands, find fresh resources and mates, and avoid intraspecies competition in times of overpopulation. For birds, butterflies and other winged creatures, covering long distances may be as easy as the breeze they travel on. But for soil-dwellers of the crawling variety, the hurdle remains: How do they reach new, far-off habitats?
For one group of tiny arthropods called springtails (Collembola), a recent fossil discovery now suggests their answer to this question has been to piggyback on the dispersal abilities of others, literally.
In findings published in BMC Evolutionary Biology, researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and Museum national d'Histoire naturelle have detailed the discovery of an ancient interaction preserved in 16-million-year-old amber from the Dominican Republic: 25 springtails attached to, and nearby, a large winged termite and ant from the days of the early Miocene.
The fossil exhibits a number of springtails still attached to the wings and legs of their hosts, while others are preserved as if gradually floating away from their hosts within the amber. Researchers say the discovery highlights the existence of a new type of hitchhiking behavior among wingless soil-dwelling arthropods, and could be key to explaining how symphypleonan springtails successfully achieved dispersal worldwide.
"The existence of this hitchhiking behavior is especially exciting given the fact that modern springtails are rarely described as having any interspecfic association with surrounding animals," said Ninon Robin, the paper's first author whose postdoctoral research at NJIT's Department of Biological Sciences was funded by the Fulbright Program of the French-American Commission. "This finding underscores how important fossils are for telling us about unsuspected ancient ecologies as well as still ongoing behaviors that were so far simply overlooked."
Today, springtails are among the most common arthropods found in moist habitats around the world. Most springtails possess a specialized appendage under their abdomen they use to "spring" away in flee-like fashion to avoid predation. However this organ is not sufficient for traversing long distances, especially since most springtails are unable to survive long in dry areas.
[...] "Because it appears that springtails reflexively detach from their hosts when in danger, evidenced by the detached individuals in the amber, ethanol would effectively erase the link between hitchhiker and host," said Barden. "Amber derives from fossilized sticky tree resin and is viscous enough that it would retain the interaction. ... Meaning, sometimes you have to turn to 16-million-year-old amber fossils to find out what might be happening in your backyard."
More information: Ninon Robin et al, Fossil amber reveals springtails' longstanding dispersal by social insects, BMC Evolutionary Biology (2019). DOI: 10.1186/s12862-019-1529-6
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 01 2019, @12:16AM
Vote Libertarian Republican.
Kill the poor.
Take from the young and give to the old.
Fuck you, got mine, give me yours.
(Score: 1) by NPC-131072 on Sunday December 01 2019, @12:44AM
Enough about Runaway1956, let's do biology!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 01 2019, @02:50AM
Just like that other common arthropod, the vest-wearing Mohammedan, the best way to deal with it is two bullets in the back.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 01 2019, @07:25AM (1 child)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4pArjPVA-8 [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Sunday December 01 2019, @01:18PM
Ah such a great song, I was ten when it was a hit and recall it well. In addition it's actually appropriate for the subject. Kudos.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.