Washington, May 16 (ANI): Researchers have discovered the first ever record of insect pollination, which got preserved in tree raisin over 100 million ago.
The discovery revealed that the insects called Thrips lived during the dinosaur age and had dusted themselves with hundreds of pollen grains from a gingko tree.
However, they got preserved in tree resin called 'amber' before they perished.
After the initial discovery of amber pieces', they were then kept in a collection of the Museo de Ciencias Naturales de Alava in Spain.
Study researcher Carmen Soriano and an international team of scientists, who are studying the two pieces of these tree raisins discovered in what is now northern Spain, revealed that the specimens date back between 110 million and 105 million years ago.
The finding is being called as the oldest known record of insect pollination, the Discovery reports.
"This is the oldest direct evidence for pollination, and the only one from the age of the dinosaurs."
"The co-evolution of flowering plants and insects, thanks to pollination, is a great evolutionary success story," said Carmen Soriano
According to the researchers the newly discovered thrips lived during the lower Cretaceous Period when flowering plants would have just started to diversify, eventually replacing conifers as the dominant species.
During the research the team found six female thrips, also called thysanopterans, enclosed in the amber.
They found hundreds of pollen grains attached to their 2 millimeters long bodies.
The thrips, the researchers found, belong to a new genus now named Gymnopollisthrips, with two new species, G. minor and G. major.
The research has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, this week.
To get a closer look at the specimen, the team used synchrotron X-ray tomography at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), focusing on the most representative of the amber-encapsulated thrips.
This technology uses charged particles which are sent speeding through magnetic fields.
These particles then release high-energy light that can then pierce opaque materials to reveal three-dimensional, high-resolution images.
The team claimed that the images revealed various features of the pollen grains, together suggesting that the grains came from a kind of cycad, or gingko tree.
Gingkos have separate male and female trees. While males produce small pollen cones, the females bear ovules at the ends of stalks that develop into seeds after pollination.
The researchers are wondering as to what these pollen transporters got in return for their services so long ago.
However the team has tried to come up with an answer to this.
The advantage must have been the opportunity to pick up pollen food for the thrip's larvae, said the researchers.
This very benefit would have later resulted in the emergence of the ringed hairs specialized for pollen transport.
"Thrips might indeed turn out to be one of the first pollinator groups in geological history, long before evolution turned some of them into flower pollinators," Soriano added. (ANI)
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