Czech Republic;
Amber Council at Geological-Palaeontological Institute;
845 06 Bratislava;
Kitakyushu Museum of Natural History & Human History;
2;
Japan;
Russia;
Germany;
K?shofen;
Paleontological Institute;
117868 Moscow;
84215 Bratislava;
State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy;
20146 Hamburg;
Bratislava;
Charles University;
Fukuoka 805-0071;
Slovak Academy of Sciences;
Institute of Zoology;
Comenius University;
Slovakia;
Nanjing 210008;
Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment;
Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology;
840 05 Bratislava;
Russian Academy of Sciences;
B?blingen;
University of Hamburg;
Earth Science Institute;
Faculty of Natural Sciences;
Chinese Academy of Sciences;
Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart;
D- 70191 Stuttgart;
Shanghai;
China;
12843 Praha;
Kassel;
Batesian mimicry is a relationship in which a harmful organism (the model) is mimicked by a harmless organism (the mimic), which gains protection because predators mistake it for the model. It is the most widely studied of mimicry complexes and has undoubtedly played an important role in the speciation of various animals especially insects. However, little is known about the early evolution of this important behavior and its evolutionary significance owing to a dearth of paleontological records. Here we report several specialized representatives of the family Alienopteridae from the Early Cretaceous of Brazil, mid-Cretaceous Burmite, and the Eocene of the USA. They exhibit unique morphological adaptations for wasp and ant mimicry and represent one of the oldest evidence of Batesian mimicry in the insect fossil record. Our findings reveal at least 65-million-year coevolution between extinct alienopterids and aculeates. Phylogenetic Bayesian network analysis houses Alienopteridae within Umenocoleidae explosively radiating ~127 Ma. Alienopteridae is the only Mesozoic-type cockroach family which passed K/Pg.
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