Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T07:53:12.842Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

19 - The Cretaceous and Cenozoic record of insects (Hexapoda) with regard to global change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2009

Stephen J. Culver
Affiliation:
East Carolina University
Peter F. Rawson
Affiliation:
University College London
Get access

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Insects (Superclass Hexapoda) are arguably the most diverse and successful of all groups of animals. It is estimated that 20 million species could be living today (Jarzembowski & Ross, 1993) but only about 1.4 million have been described. They occupy all main environments except for those that are fully marine, and they have evolved many different feeding and defence strategies (Gullan & Cranston, 1994). Insects are susceptible to climate change, particularly temperature changes, and many are dependant on the plants on which they feed.

The fossil record of insects is based predominantly on their occurrence in non-marine (lacustrine and fluvial) sediments. They are usually preserved as isolated wings or rarely as complete insects. The wings of different groups of insects have a distinct venation which provides characters to enable their identification and classification. The Cretaceous and Tertiary insect record is supplemented by their remarkable preservation in amber.

The richness of the fossil record of insects has only begun to be realized in the last few years with the publication of three main databases. Two of these are of insect families that occur in the fossil record (Ross & Jarzembowski, 1993: updated in Jarzembowski & Ross, 1996; Labandeira, 1995). The third is a database of genera (Carpenter, 1992), although unfortunately this only contains data up to the end of 1983 and it is now out of date. Since 1983, an additional 500 families and roughly 1 000 genera have been recorded as fossils.

Type
Chapter
Information
Biotic Response to Global Change
The Last 145 Million Years
, pp. 288 - 302
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×