Shulou(Shulou.com)12/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, December 5 (Xinhua)-- existing studies have shown that male mosquitoes are "vegetarian" rather than blood-sucking, feeding exclusively on plant nectar and sap in fruits, stems and leaves.

But an article published on the cover of Current Biology on December 4th overturned that conclusion, saying that in the early Cretaceous 130 million years ago, male mosquitoes were also blood-sucking.

According to Danny Aza, there are more than 3000 different types of mosquitoes in the mosquito family today, but human understanding of their origin and early evolution is extremely limited. The study, led by Danny Aza, featured two amber fossils from Lebanon that preserved mosquitoes.

Danny Azar collected amber specimens from the study from central Lebanon 15 years ago, but did not give priority to studying them at the time, but he was surprised by recent research.

His co-author and former doctoral supervisor Andr é Nel of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris confirmed that Dr Azar's two amber specimens appear to be the oldest known fossils in the mosquito family, with long, sharp mouthparts covered with tiny toothlike bristles.

These insects have pincer-like organs on the abdomen, called buckle rings, which are used to catch females during mating. The existence of these buttons means that Dr Azar and Dr Nell stumbled upon a seemingly impossible thing: the mouthparts of male mosquitoes are used to suck blood.

CTOnews.com attached the reference address of the paper: Dany Azar, Andr é Nel,Diying Huang,Michael S. Engel,The earliest fossil mosquito,DECEMBER 04, 2023 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.10.047

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