Termite colonies from mid-Cretaceous Myanmar demonstrate their early eusocial lifestyle in damp wood

Zhipeng Zhao; Xiangchu Yin; Chungkun Shih; Taiping Gao; Dong Ren

doi:10.1093/nsr/nwz141

Termite colonies from mid-Cretaceous Myanmar demonstrate their early eusocial lifestyle in damp wood

Natl Sci Rev. 2020 Feb;7(2):381-390. doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwz141. Epub 2019 Sep 13.

Authors

Zhipeng Zhao¹, Xiangchu Yin², Chungkun Shih^{1

3}, Taiping Gao¹, Dong Ren¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Life Sciences, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100048, China.
² Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xining 810008, China.
³ Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 20013-7012, USA.

Abstract

Insect eusociality is characterized by cooperative brood care, reproductive division of labour and multiple generations of adults within a colony. The morphological specializations of the different termite castes from Burmese amber were recently reported, indicating the termites possessed advanced sociality in the mid-Cretaceous. Unfortunately, all the reported Cretaceous termites are individually preserved, which does not cover the behaviours of the cooperative brood care and multiple generations of adults in the nests of the Cretaceous termites. Herein, we report three eusocial aggregations from colonies of the oldest known Stolotermitidae, Cosmotermes gen. nov., in 100 Ma mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber. One large aggregation, comprising 8 soldiers, 56 workers/pseudergates and 25 immatures of different instars, additionally presents the behaviours of cooperative brood care and overlapping generations. Furthermore, taphonomic evidence indicates Cosmotermes most probably dwelled in damp/rotting wood, which provides a broader horizon of the early societies and ecology of the eusocial Cosmotermes.

Keywords: Stolotermitidae; Termitoidae; aggregation; caste; cooperative brood care.