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Was the kateretid beetle Pelretes really a Cretaceous angiosperm pollinator?

Nature Plants volume 8, pages 38–40 (2022)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 23 December 2021

The Original Article was published on 12 April 2021

arising from E. Tihelka et al. Nature Plants https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-021-00893-2 (2021)

In a recently published study, Tihelka et al.1 reported on a piece of Cretaceous amber containing a short-winged flower beetle (Kateretidae: Pelretes), aggregations of angiosperm pollen and pollen-containing coprolites. The authors concluded that these fossils provide evidence of Cretaceous angiosperm pollination by beetles. However, our scrutiny of the provided illustrations raised the following questions: (1) is the pollen really of angiospermous origin, (2) is the identification of the coprolites correct and (3) can they be associated with the beetle?

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Fig. 1: Highlighted pollen grains from Tihelka et al.1 Fig. 2b.
Fig. 2: Analysis of faecal structure of a ladybird beetle fed with rapeseed pollen.

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Acknowledgements

We thank T. Wappler, B. Wang, D. Peris, H. Pang, K. Ma, F. Li and J. Wu for helpful discussions, X. Du and Z. Mai for experimental assistance. This work was supported by the research grant of the Sun Yat-sen University Bairen Plan (77010-18841290). It is a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship contribution for E.J. The work of F.G. was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), project no. P34303-B.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, School of Ecology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China

    Tong Bao & Liang Bao

  2. Senckenberg Forschungsstation Grube Messel, Senckenberg Forschungsinstitut und Naturmuseum Frankfurt/M, Messel, Germany

    Sonja Wedmann

  3. Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Friðgeir Grímsson

  4. Institut für Zoologie und Evolutionsforschung, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Jena, Germany

    Rolf Georg Beutel

  5. Department of Palaeontology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Leyla Seyfullah

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

    Edmund A. Jarzembowski

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  1. Tong Bao
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Contributions

T.B. conceived and designed the experiments. T.B. and L.B. performed the experiments. T.B., S.W., F.G., R.G.B., L.S. and E.J. analysed the data. T.B. and L.B. contributed materials/analysis tools. T.B., S.W., F.G., R.G.B., L.S. and E.J. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Tong Bao.

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Bao, T., Wedmann, S., Grímsson, F. et al. Was the kateretid beetle Pelretes really a Cretaceous angiosperm pollinator?. Nat. Plants 8, 38–40 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-021-01044-3

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