New Cretaceous crickets of the subfamilies Nemobiinae and Podoscirtinae (Orthoptera, Grylloidea: Trigonidiidae, Oecanthidae) attest the antiquity of these clades

Laure Desutter-Grandcolas (1, 2) , Hugo Josse (3) , Marie Laurent (3) , Lucas Denadai De Campos (4) , Sylvain Hugel (5) , Carmen Soriano , André Nel (1, 2) , Vincent Perrichot (3)

1 ISYEB - Institut de Systématique, Evolution, Biodiversité
2 MNHN - Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle
3 GR - Géosciences Rennes
4 Instituto de Biociencias, Departamento de Zoologia
5 INCI - Institut des Neurosciences Cellulaires et Intégratives

Fossils are more and more used in phylogenetic evolutionary studies either for clade calibration, or as terminals in a dataset including morphological characters. The strength of these methodological advances relies however on the quality and completeness of the fossil record. For crickets (Insecta, Orthoptera, Gryllidea), few ancient (pre-Cenozoic) well-preserved fossils are known, except for isolated wings often classified in purely fossil groups and a few fossils found in Cretaceous amber. Here, we present two remarkable fossils from mid-Cretaceous amber of France, that were imaged using X-ray synchrotron microtomography and exhibit an exquisite preservation allowing description with a precision similar to that of extant taxa. Palaeonemobius occidentalis Laurent and Desutter-Grandcolas, gen. nov., sp. nov. and Picogryllus carentonensis Josse and Desutter-Grandcolas, gen. nov., sp. nov. are the oldest representatives of the Nemobiinae and Podoscirtinae subfamilies of the Trigonidiidae and Oecanthidae families respectively. P. carentonensis Josse and Desutter-Grandcolas, gen. nov., sp. nov. is also the smallest adult male with a full stridulatory apparatus ever documented in crickets (body length 3.3 mm), and the first taxon of the cricket clade for which male genitalia can be partly described. We discuss the significance of Cretaceous fossils of crickets for future evolutionary studies of this clade.

Mots clés: Insecta; Ensifera; amber; taxonomy; calibration; evolutionary studies

Domaines: Planète et Univers [physics]; Sciences de la Terre; Paléontologie; Systématique, phylogénie et taxonomie

Laure Desutter-Grandcolas, Hugo Josse, Marie Laurent, Lucas Denadai De Campos, Sylvain Hugel, et al.. New Cretaceous crickets of the subfamilies Nemobiinae and Podoscirtinae (Orthoptera, Grylloidea: Trigonidiidae, Oecanthidae) attest the antiquity of these clades. Geological Magazine, 2023, 160 (5), pp.927-940. ⟨10.1017/S0016756823000055⟩. ⟨insu-04065681⟩