Abstract
Cercopoidea is a diverse insect group, but its early evolution, disparity and ecology remain unclear. Juroala daohugouensis Chen & Wang gen. et sp. nov., from the Middle–Upper Jurassic of north-eastern China, is established herein and described on the basis of 42 whole-bodied fossils, representing a new subfamily, Juroalinae subfam. nov. of the primitive family Sinoalidae. Chengdecercopis Hong, Citation1983 is transferred from Procercopidae to this new subfamily and Stictocercopis Fu & Huang, Citation2018 is also attributed to the new subfamily. Fangyuanini Chen & Wang trib. nov. is erected for Fangyuania Chen, Szwedo & Wang, 2018 from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber. Our cladistic analyses recover the relationships within the Cercopoidea as follows: (Juroalinae + (Sinoalini + Fangyuanini)) + (Procercopidae + (Cercopionidae + five modern families)). The evolutionary history and morphological diversification in the Mesozoic is discussed based on our phylogenetic reconstruction. In addition, the abundant material in the present study not only indicates high intra-specific or even intra-individual variation caused by biological and/or taphonomic factors, but also reveals an extremely female-biased propensity, suggesting that the new taxon probably had adaptations to special palaeoenvironments in physiology, ecology and ethology (e.g. parthenogenesis and sociability).
http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:5EDD7D33-D509-4330-A01F-F41DF664E1C2
Acknowledgements
The authors sincerely thank Limei Lin, Junqiang Zhang and Yameng Li for their constructive comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41502007; 41472023; 41702012; 41572010; 41622201; 41688103), the Natural Scientific Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2013DQ017; ZR2016DB24), and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2015M580480). This is a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship contribution for EAJ.
Supplemental material
Supplemental material for this article can be accessed at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14772019.2019.1587526
Associate Editor: Vladimir Blagoderov