Zaragoza, Feb 15 (EFE).- An investigation by a group of paleontologists based on fossils located in a site located in Estercuel (Teruel) describes a high diversity of interactions that occurred between plants and insects 100 million years ago in this geographic area.
The research, recently published in the scientific journal ‘Plants’, has been developed by the Teruel-Dinópolis Paleontological Complex Foundation in collaboration with experts from the University of Vigo and the Hessisches Landesmuseum of Darmstadt in Bonn (Germany), reports the Aragonese Government .
The main person in charge of the research, the paleobotanist from the University of Vigo Artai Santos, points out that “the interactions described affect the leaves of two terrestrial plants and those of an aquatic one and reveal 23 different types of damage” belonging to eight types of strategies feeding of insects: in holes, on margins, superficial, skeletonization, perforation and suction, mining, oviposition and formation of galls.
Studies on the interactions between plants and herbivorous insects currently show that these animals have developed a wide variety of strategies and behaviors aimed at consuming plant tissues and fluids and how they reacted to these attacks trying to minimize the damage. damage caused by insects.
In this way, the study of said damages provides direct evidence on the ecological relations between these two dominant groups of organisms in the ecosystems of the past.
For this reason, the researchers point out, the study of the evidence of this type of interactions in the records of fossil leaves yields important information about the paleoecosystems of the Earth, by providing data on the groups of insects that developed in the past and on the evolution of their herbivory strategies, as well as the defenses developed by plants to react to these attacks.
According to Luis Miguel Sender, a researcher at the Dinópolis Foundation and co-author of the study, “the high degree and diversity of damage, as well as the types of herbivory strategies used, suggest that these angiosperm plants were already an important source of food and accommodation for insects in Iberian ecosystems at the end of the Lower Cretaceous, which was the key moment in the diversification of angiosperms and meant a revolution in terrestrial ecosystems at the time.”
This publication is part of the research carried out by the FOCONTUR Research Group, financed through the Department of Science, University and Knowledge Society of the Government of Aragon.