The first fossil lace bug (Heteroptera: Tingidae) from New Zealand

Abstract

The first fossil lace bug (Tingidae) from New Zealand is described from the earliest Miocene Foulden Maar Fossil-Lagerstätte in Otago. The single specimen, observable in ventral position in finely laminated lacustrine diatomite, belongs to Tingidae based on the areolate (lace-like) paranotum and hemelytra and the presence of sternal laminae. The incomplete preservation does not allow for a definite identification of the genus, and the fossil is provisionally identified as Tingidae gen. et sp. indet. This new record adds the family Tingidae to the Miocene Heteroptera fauna of New Zealand and the Australasian region.

Uwe Kaulfuss [[email protected]], Department of Animal Evolution and Biodiversity, University of Göttingen, Untere Karspüle 2, 37073 Göttingen, Germany

Ernst Heiss [[email protected]], Tiroler Landesmuseum, Josef-Schraffl-Strasse 2a, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria.

Key Words:

• Tingidae
• Miocene
• Foulden Maar Fossil-Lagerstätte
• New Zealand

Acknowledgements

We thank the Gibson family for permitting access to the fossil site, John Conran from the University of Adelaide for information on the fossil record of Asteliaceae in New Zealand and Daphne Lee from the University of Otago for improvements on an earlier version of the manuscript. The reviewers and Alcheringa Associate Editor Chris Mays are thanked for their constructive suggestions, which improved the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Marsden Grant from the Royal Society of New Zealand [11-UOO-043] and the German Research Foundation under Grant 429296833.