Fossil Trichoptera embedded in mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber

Abstract

The paper gives an overview of Trichoptera found as adults in mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber from about 100 million years ago. Fifty-eight extinct species are listed, three of which are still described here: Paduniella cretacea sp. nov., Palerasnitsynus vilarinoi sp. nov., Palleptocerus kuranishii sp. nov. The extinct subfamily Palerasnitsyninae stat. nov. of the family Xiphocentronidae is established and the extinct Bipectinata orientalis comb. nov. is transferred from the family Calamoceratidae to the family Odontoceridae. The extinct family Lepidochlamidae Wang et al., 2022, stat. nov. is transferred to the superfamily Leptoceroidea. The fifty-eight caddisflies of Burmese amber are distributed among twenty-one genera and fourteen families, of which fifteen genera and four families are also extinct. The large time distance between extinct and extant organisms makes the assignment to the extant genera and families difficult, because the higher taxa are defined according to the species living today and often do not or hardly correspond to the earlier species and their adaptations. Furthermore, in line with the hypothesis of a Gondwanan origin of Burmese amber, some embedded Trichopterans are discussed as relict descendants of Gondwanan Trichoptera, e.g. the family Palleptoceridae and the Xiphocentronid subfamily Palerasnitsyninae.