The courtship rituals among the odonates, an order of insects that includes dragonflies and damselflies, are very striking. Several individuals can take part in them, which seem to dance while flying, and the males usually attract the females by energetically flapping their wings. Zoologists have suspected for years that the ancestors of the current species already performed this type of nuptial dance . However, they did not have fossils to attest it with certainty, and the few studies that have been carried out on this matter are somewhat ambiguous.
Now, a team of researchers from the Nanking Institute of Geology and Paleontology in China has described this type of behavior from the remains of three male damselflies that were trapped in an amber block in what is now the north. from Burma in the mid-Cretaceous, between 66 and 145 million years ago.
The specimens, called Yijenplatycnemis huangi , have spectacular limbs – the tibiae have sheath-shaped elongations – that were probably used to attract females . In some modern species of the Platycnemididae and Chlorocyphidae families, similar structures can be observed, but much less developed. Thus, during courtship, the males of Platycypha caligata show the front to the females and use the back as a kind of defense system, to keep their competitors at bay.
In an essay published in the journal Scientific Reports , paleobiologists Daran Zheng and Bo Wang and their collaborators note that the Yijenplatycnemis huangi used them in the same way, although their limbs are considerably larger and asymmetrical . In the experts’ opinion, this also made it easier for other males to notice their presence.
Images: Yang Dinghua / Daran Zheng
