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October 2015 OCTOBER 2015 WESTERN AUSTRALIAN INSECT STUDY SOCIETY INC. COMMITTEE OF MANAGEMENT 2015–2016 President: Peter Langlands (0438 940 386, [email protected]) Secretary: Position vacant. Treasurer: Kylie Webster (0439 968 556, [email protected]) Councillors: Peter Irwin ([email protected]) Christopher Taylor ([email protected]) Two positions vacant Membership: All enquiries regarding membership should be forwarded to the Secretary ([email protected]). Newsletter: All contributions and enquiries should be directed to the editor, Christopher Taylor. Web-site: http://www.insectsocietywa.org.au *************************************************************************** Contributions to the Newsletter by members are welcome Tell us about your entomological activities, observations, or concerns *************************************************************************** The Society gratefully acknowledges the support of the Western Australian Museum Cover illustration: Rove beetle, Actinus macleayi, feeds on flies in a decaying palm trunk. Photographed by Harold Furner in the northern Daintree rainforest, Queensland. WESTERN AUSTRALIAN INSECT STUDY SOCIETY INC. NEWSLETTER FOR OCTOBER 2015 Coming Events Photo Competition Remember that the 2015 photo competition is NEXT MEETING still open! Details were given in the August issue of the WAISS newsletter; the closing Wednesday 14 October 2015 date for entries is the 1st of November. 7.30 pm, Kings Park Administration Centre. _____________________________________ Main feature: Report on the August The Stable Fly: A newly declared pest in WA Meeting Dr David Cook is an entomologist working for both the University of WA and the Department Jurassic Insects of Western of Agriculture and Food WA (DAFWA), researching insects affecting humans and Australia livestock. David's principle insect of interest is the stable fly Stomoxys calcitrans which is a Presentation and pictures by Sarah Martin; newly declared pest in WA. This fly has been report by Margaret Owen in WA for just over 100 years but over the past 20 years has become a major pest on the Swan Dr Sarah Martin was the main speaker at the Coastal Plain around Perth. Dr Cook will take August meeting. Sarah gained her PhD from you through the background to this debilitating Monash University and now works as a senior global pest and talk about some of the geologist at the Geological Survey of Western management options being researched. Australia. The discovery and investigation of fossilised insects is Sarah’s passion. Insect-in-focus: Margaret Owen will be giving us “Bushland in Focus: Underwood Avenue Bushland”. Many of you will be aware of Margaret’s enthusiasm for this piece of remnant bushland and she will be presenting us with some of its recent highlights. Committee Positions We are still looking for people to fill the three open positions on the society committee. In particular, we desperately need someone to fill Indeterminate beetle fossil from Mintaja, Western the role of Secretary. Kim Harman has kindly Australia continued to conduct some secretarial duties, but her other commitments (about three The Mesozoic era from 250 to 65 million years months old at time of writing) mean that she is ago lay between two mass extinction events, simply unable to continue in this role. that at the end of the Permian and at the Remember, we need your input if we are to beginning of the Cenozoic. The era is divided keep the Western Australian Insect Study into the Triassic, the Jurassic and the Society to the standard you have all come to Cretaceous. expect. 3 WESTERN AUSTRALIAN INSECT STUDY SOCIETY INC. NEWSLETTER FOR OCTOBER 2015 The Mesozoic was a critical time in insect 1320 insect fossils from three spots along a dry evolution. The Triassic fauna included early gully, a rich return for the area covered. members of important modern groups such as Unfortunately most of these fossils are not beetles, moths, wasps and flies. However, well preserved: most are just fragments of there were not many modern families present. bodies that are not very good for identification. The climate of over the massive continent of 54% of the fragments recovered are elytra, Gondwana (in which the modern continents of 31% wings and other parts. 63% were parts of Australia, Africa, South America and beetles and 28% parts of cockroaches. Eight Antarctica were conjoined) was warm and orders are represented in total. Thirty species temperate. There were no polar icecaps and of Coleoptera have been recognised, with a no flowering plants. These conditions largely high diversity of the family Ommatidae. continued through the following Jurassic However, as most of these are represented by period. the elytra only, formal identification is in many cases not possible. These are referred to The early Jurassic saw the evolution of many using ‘open nomenclature’, such as of the modern insect lineages. We know a lot ‘Ommatidae sp. 1’. about the Northern Hemisphere fauna from this period as it is represented by tens of Insects found would have lived in the canopy thousands of known insect fossils. However, (e.g. the Coleoptera family Schizocoleidae), the contemporary fauna of the Southern the aquatic environment, the leaf litter (e.g. Hemisphere was long represented by only one Dictyoptera, Grylloblattodea, Orthoptera) or fossil that had been found in the Talbragar were xylophilous [living on or in wood] Fish Bed of New South Wales. ground dwellers (e.g. Coleoptera such as Ommatidae and Elateridae). One definite new species of beetle has been identified. Four species of beetle were likely aquatic as there is a notch present in the elytra allowing the beetle to lock them down and exclude water. Wing impression of Kurablattina mintajaensis (Liberiblattinidae), an early dictyopteran (roachoid) described by Sarah in 2008. Sarah has been working at a superficially unprepossessing site in the middle of a farmer’s paddock at Mintaja 200km north of Perth near Jurien Bay. This site is part of the Cattamarra Coal Measures, which are Wing of an undescribed fulgoroid (Hemiptera), possibly composed of sandstones, shales and silts representing a new extinct family. including bituminous coal (although Sarah’s fossils are not associated with coal). During Three families of roachoids (Dictyoptera, the the early Jurassic, this spot was a river delta broader group including cockroaches, mantids surrounded by swamps. Sarah has collected and termites) have been found. Roachoid wing 4 WESTERN AUSTRALIAN INSECT STUDY SOCIETY INC. NEWSLETTER FOR OCTOBER 2015 venation was very variable even between Bark Lice, Book Lice and individuals of single species, making it difficult to assess the exact number of species True Lice: A Brief present. The Mintaja deposit also includes Introduction to the Psocodea representatives of the Grylloblattodea. Modern species of Grylloblattodea (sometimes called Christopher Taylor ice-crawlers) are wingless and restricted to cold habitats in the Northern Hemisphere but One of the more unfairly obscure groups of fossil species had wings and were more insects is the Psocodea, the lineage including widespread. the various species of ‘lice’. While psocodeans are diverse and abundant, they are mostly Other insects found at Mintaja included large retiring animals, the non-parasitic species planthoppers and grasshoppers. These have doing little to bring themselves to human been assigned to twelve families and thirteen attention. About 800 species of Psocodea (300 genera; most of the represented families are non-parasitic and 500 parasitic species) have now extinct. Only three of the thirteen genera been recorded to date from Australia, but the are unique to Mintaja with most also being true number present is almost certainly much found in the Northern Hemisphere. This higher. suggests that it really was a small world after all, with strong connections across the massive connected continents of the Jurassic. Alternatively, the lack of endemism could be because of the then similar climate over the world. The modern continents began separating in the late Jurassic. During questions and answers, the point was raised that the number of aquatic insects fossilised in the deposit seemed low considering that they had been preserved in an aquatic environment. Sarah suggested that this may have been because the habitat was ephemeral with decaying wood making the A European bark louse, Valenzuela flavida, with her water largely uninhabitable. A question was eggs. Photo © gbohne also asked about the absence of bees and ants (www.flickr.com/photos/gbohne/6971814774). which Sarah explained was simply because these groups had not yet evolved. True social Characteristic features of the Psocodea include insects would not appear later. that they are small, fairly soft-bodied insects. The lower part of the face is elongate, with an Sarah was asked about the possibility of amber inflated clypeus often resembling a bulbous fossils. No Jurassic insects have been found in ‘nose’. The pronotum is reduced, and the legs amber but we have very small Cretaceous are slender with the tarsi having at most three fossils in amber in Victoria and Tasmania. segments. Unfortunately, amber cannot be directly aged, and as it floats really well it could be deposited You may be familiar with the classification of far from its origin. the Psocodea as two orders, the Psocoptera containing the non-parasitic bark lice and book Thanks were given to Sarah for a fascinating lice, and the Phthiraptera containing the talk. parasitic true lice. However, evolutionary 5 WESTERN AUSTRALIAN INSECT STUDY SOCIETY INC. NEWSLETTER FOR OCTOBER 2015 studies have shown that the parasitic lice are a derived sublineage of the ‘Psocoptera’. The non-parasitic bark lice can be found living on vegetation or rocks where they mostly feed on micro-fungi. Some bark lice can form dense aggregations containing adults and/or nymphs; the concerted movements of such aggregations have earned some North American species the name of ‘tree cattle’. While most bark lice are fairly conservative in their appearance, others are quite distinctive. Some, such as the Lepidopsocidae and Amphientomidae, have scaly moth-like wings.
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