The Diversity of Spoon-Winged and Thread-Winged Lacewing Larvae Today and in Deep Time—An Expanded View

Larvae of lacewings (Neuroptera) are (mostly) ferocious predators, and the most well known are the larvae of antlions. In the larger group of antlion-like lacewings, the larvae resemble those of antlions to a certain degree but have certain peculiarities. Larvae of the group Nemopteridae can be easily separated into two groups: the larvae of Crocinae (thread-winged lacewings), also known as long-necked antlions, have relatively slender mouthparts and long necks, as the name suggests; the larvae of Nemopterinae (spoon-winged lacewings) have stout mouthparts and bodies. We here report new lacewing larvae of the group Nemopteridae from about 100-million-year-old Kachin amber, Myanmar. The new findings significantly expand the dataset of these animals in the fossil record. Quantitative analyses comparing the fossil and extant larvae support earlier indications that the morphological diversity of the fossils was in fact larger, yet the results are not as conclusive as in other ingroups of Neuroptera. The comparison also indicates that convergent evolution played an important role in the evolution of larvae of antlion-like lacewings.