Ancient Parasite Attached Itself to Salamanders With Sucking Plate

Posted on June 25, 2014

Researchers have discovered a fossil fly larva with an unusual sucking apparatus. The larva inhabited lakes 165 million years ago in what is now northeastern China. The larva had a thorax formed like a sucking plate that it used to adhere itself to salamanders. The larva would then suck the salamander's blood with its piercer-like mouthparts.

The drawing below shows one of the larva attached to the side of a salamander. The researchers from China and the University of Bonn say no insect is equipped with this type of thorax today. 300,000 of the fossil insects were discovered. Fine-grained mudstone helped preserve the fossils. The insect was given the name Qiyia jurassica. "Qiyia" means bizarre in Chinese and "jurassica" refers to the Jurassic period.

The researchers say the salamanders were not killed by the ancient parasites. Scientists don't know what the insects looked like after completing metamorphosis.

A research paper on the ancient fly larva can be found here in the journal, eLife.



More from Science Space & Robots