Abstract
The staphylinid subfamily Micropeplinae includes small strongly sclerotized beetles with truncate elytra leaving the most part of abdomen exposed. Fossil micropeplines are rare and confined to Cenozoic representatives of extant genera. Here, we describe the oldest micropepline, Protopeplus cretaceus gen. and sp. n., from the Upper Cretaceous Burmese amber. Fluorescence microscope and confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) were both used to reveal diagnostic features of Micropeplinae and some primitive traits that place Protopeplus very basally within Micropeplinae.
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Acknowledgments
We are very grateful to four anonymous reviewers for providing useful criticism and constructive suggestions that improved the manuscript. We thank Prof. Dany Azar for preparing the amber specimen. This research was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2012CB821903), Outstanding Youth Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK 2012049) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (91114201 and J1210006).
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Communicated by: Sven Thatje
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Cai, CY., Huang, DY. The oldest micropepline beetle from Cretaceous Burmese amber and its phylogenetic implications (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae). Naturwissenschaften 101, 813–817 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-014-1221-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-014-1221-z