Yingying Cui, Jérémie Bardin, Benjamin Wipfler, Alexandre Demers-Potvin, Ming Bai, Yi-Jie Tong, Grace Nuoxi Chen, Huarong Chen, Zhen-Ya Zhao, Dong Ren, Olivier Béthoux
Until the advent of phylogenomics, the atypical morphology of extant representatives of the insect orders Grylloblattodea (ice-crawlers) and Mantophasmatodea (gladiators) had confounding effects on efforts to resolve their placement within Polyneoptera. This recent research has unequivocally shown that these species-poor groups are closely related and form the clade Xenonomia. Nonetheless, divergence dates of these groups remain poorly constrained, and their evolutionary history debated, as the few well-identified fossils, characterized by a suite of morphological features similar to that of extant forms, are comparatively young...
March 7, 2024: Insect Science