Action in amber

Fossil reveals 16-million-year-old hitchhikers.

How did tiny crawling soil dwellers get around during the early Miocene? If this snapshot in amber from the Dominican Republic is anything to go by, they hitchhiked.

The fossil reveals a number of tiny arthropods called springtails (Collembola) still attached to the wings and legs of a large winged termite, while others are gradually floating away from their host.

In a paper in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, researchers from the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), US, and Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, France, say the discovery highlights the existence of a new type of hitchhiking behaviour among wingless soildwelling arthropods.

It also could help explain how symphypleonan springtails (one of three main groups) achieved dispersal worldwide. “The existence of this hitchhiking behaviour is especially exciting given the fact that modern springtails are rarely described as having any interspecific association with surrounding animals,” says NJIT’S Ninon Robin.