02426nas a2200313 4500008004100000022002500041245024200066210006900308260001600377300001200393490000700405520136500412653002501777653002001802653001101822653001701833653001901850653001801869100001701887700001801904700001901922700002901941700002201970700001301992700001402005700001502019700001402034856006402048 2022 eng d a0031-0301, 1555-617400aReply to: “Insects with 100 Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Feathers are not Ectoparasites” and “Crawlers of the Scale Insect Mesophthirus (Homoptera Xylococcidae) on Feathers in Burmese Amber—Wind Transport or Phoresy on Dinosaurs?”0 aReply to Insects with 100 MillionYearOld Dinosaur Feathers are n cJun-01-2022 a333-3370 v563 a
We described ten nymph specimens of an insect, Mesophthirus engeli (incertae sedis), from the mid-Cretaceous Myanmar (Burmese) amber, preserved together with partially damaged dinosaur feathers. Based on the ectoparasitic morphological characters of these tiny insect nymphs, we concluded that Mesophthirus engeli was the earliest known feather-feeding insect and that integument-feeding behaviors of insects appeared during or before the mid-Cretaceous along with the radiations of feathered dinosaurs including birds. Grimaldi and Vea raised some concerns about these feather-feeding insects and supposed that the nymphs of Mesophthirus engeli were crawlers of scale insects, i.e. nymphal stages of Coccoidea, coincidentally co-occurring with damaged feathers. Shcherbakov (2022, this issue) accepted and developed the argumentation of Grimaldi and Vea (2021). We would like to address their concerns here.
Original paper of Gao et al (2019) see http://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13516-4 or https://phthiraptera.myspecies.info/node/94822
Paper by Grimaldi and Vera (2021) see http://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21751-x or https://phthiraptera.myspecies.info/node/95375
Paper by Shcherbakov (2022) see https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S0031030122030121 or https://phthiraptera.myspecies.info/node/95672
10aectoparasitic insect10afeather-feeding10afossil10aMesophthirus10amid-Cretaceous10aMyanmar amber1 aGao, Taiping1 aYin, Xiangchu1 aShih, Chungkun1 aRasnitsyn, Alexander, P.1 aEmeljanov, A., F.1 aXu, Xing1 aChen, Sha1 aWang, Chen1 aRen, Dong uhttps://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S0031030122030054