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2016
Journal article
Ancient origin of high taxonomic richness among insects
Insects are a hyper-diverse group, comprising nearly three-quarters of all named animal species on the Earth, but the environmental drivers of their richness and the roles of ecological interactions and evolutionary innovations remain unclear. Previous studies have argued that family-level insect richness increased continuously over the evolutionary history of the...Clapham, M E ; Karr, J A ; Nicholson, David B ; Ross, Andrew ; Mayhew, P J
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2015
Journal article
Changes to the fossil record of insects through fifteen years of discovery
The first and last occurrences of hexapod families in the fossil record are compiled from publications up to end-2009. The major features of these data are compared with those of previous datasets (1993 and 1994). About a third of families (>400) are new to the fossil record since 1994, over...Nicholson, David B ; Ross, Andrew ; Mayhew, Peter J
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2014
Journal article
Fossil evidence for key innovations in the evolution of insect diversity
Explaining the taxonomic richness of the insects, comprising over half of all described species, is a major challenge in evolutionary biology. Previously, several evolutionary novelties (key innovations) have been posited to contribute to that richness, including the insect bauplan, wings, wing folding and complete metamorphosis, but evidence over their relative...Nicholson, David B ; Ross, Andrew ; Mayhew, P. J.
flight, extinction, Hexapoda, macroevolution, adaptive radiation, and complete metamorphosis
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Journal article
True flies (Insecta: Diptera) from the late Eocene insect limestone (Bembridge Marls) of the Isle of Wight, England, UK
The Diptera fauna from the late Eocene of the Isle of Wight (Bembridge Marls) is studied including redescriptions of formerly described material. The fauna includes the following taxa: Anisopodidae – one species; Bibionidae – 11 species; Ceratopogonidae – one described and two unidentified species; Chironomidae – undetermined species of three...Krzeminski, Wieslaw ; Blagoderov, Vladimir ; Azar, Dany ; Lukashevich, Elena ; Szadziewski, Ryszard …