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Reply to: Pelretes vivificus was a pollinator of Cretaceous angiosperms

Nature Plants volume 8, pages 41–44 (2022)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 23 December 2021

replying to T. Bao et al. Nature Plants https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-021-01044-3 (2021)

Insect pollinators may have played a crucial role in the evolutionary success of flowering plants but the early fossil record of pollination and pollen feeding is riddled with controversies1. In a recent paper2, we described a new short-winged flower beetle, Pelretes vivificus, from Burmese mid-Cretaceous amber (~99 million years ago), preserved alongside pollen grains and coprolites composed of pollen. We argued that the phylogenetic position of the beetle, its morphological specializations associated with pollen transport, attachment to pollen grains and association with cylindrical pollen-containing coprolites provide direct evidence that Pelretes visited flowering plants in the Cretaceous as one of the earliest angiosperm pollinators and pollinivores in the fossil record.

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Fig. 1: Angiosperm pollen and pollen-containing coprolites in mid-Cretaceus Burmese amber.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant nos. XDB26000000 and XDB18000000) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 42072022). D.H. was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 41925008 and 41688103) and the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research project (grant no. 2019QZKK0706).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, and Centre for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China

    Erik Tihelka, Liqin Li, Yanzhe Fu, Yitong Su, Diying Huang & Chenyang Cai

  2. School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Life Sciences Building, Bristol, UK

    Erik Tihelka & Chenyang Cai

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  1. Erik Tihelka
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Contributions

阙E.T. and C.C. conceived and designed the study. E.T. drafted the manuscript, with contributions from C.C., L.L. and D.H. C.C. captured new microphotographs. All authors participated in the finalization and review of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Chenyang Cai.

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Tihelka, E., Li, L., Fu, Y. et al. Reply to: Pelretes vivificus was a pollinator of Cretaceous angiosperms. Nat. Plants 8, 41–44 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-021-01045-2

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