An international investigation in which the Department of Zoology of the University of Granada participates has allowed discover the ancient Calliarcysa species of insect not described to date, belonging to the order ephemeroptera (or mayflies).
The specimen was located by Arnold Staniczek, of the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart (Germany), in a piece of Baltic amber with an estimated age between 35 and 47 million yearsinforms the University of Granada.
The specialized microtomography work of the Professor of Zoology at the University of Granada, Javier Alba-Tercedor, made it possible to obtain clear images of the insect for its study and detailed description.
Plants such as conifers (and some legumes) protect themselves by exuding resin, a thick, sticky liquid, as a reaction to bark damage.
Insects are frequently trapped in this resin, something that has been happening for millions of years, which has caused many of them to remain preserved inside fossilized resin which is known as amber.
According to the University of Granada, there are amber deposits in different parts of the world, including northern Spain, but those in the Baltic are the most abundant.
In many casesexplains Alba-Tercedor, the preservation of the specimens inside the amber is excellent and the transparency of the material that surrounds them allows them to be seen through and studied under a microscope in total detail.
But on other occasions, transparency is not good, as areas of opacity are formed that make it impossible to study certain details”, and in these cases, X-ray microtomography (a technique similar to the one used in hospitals to study the organs of patients) is of great value for studying fossil specimens preserved in amber.
When Arnold Staniczek, renowned ephemeroptera specialist, observed the piece from the Baltic, it was completely transparent, but showed hyaline zones surrounding some areas, such as the end of the abdomen, just where the male reproductive system (genitalia) is located, essential for characterize and be able to distinguish one species from another.
In the microtomography unit of the Department of Zoology of the University of Granada, Alba-Tercedor reconstructed the entire insectincluding those areas that the opacity of the amber made it impossible to observe.
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The participation of Roman Godunko, from the Institute of Entomology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, made it possible to identify the undescribed species of mayflies, which It belongs to the genus Calliarcys, whose first described species is found in the Iberian Peninsula.
The study was completed with a DNA analysis of the current species of the genus.