. Bulletin of the Natural History Museum Geology. NEW LOPHIONEURIDAE FROM BURMESE AMBER 41. Fig. 3 Burmacypha longicornis gen. et sp. nov. Reconstruction. accurately. Evidently there appears to be the alimentary tract filled by a dark substance. It seems to be large and forming loop(s) which looks like a large dark mass of unregular shape. Three long appendices originating from this dark mass dorsally may represent either the gastral caecae or the Malpighian tubes. Perhaps some internal genital structures are also visible but I have failed to interprete them. There are no traces of the oviposi
. Bulletin of the Natural History Museum Geology. NEW LOPHIONEURIDAE FROM BURMESE AMBER 41. Fig. 3 Burmacypha longicornis gen. et sp. nov. Reconstruction. accurately. Evidently there appears to be the alimentary tract filled by a dark substance. It seems to be large and forming loop(s) which looks like a large dark mass of unregular shape. Three long appendices originating from this dark mass dorsally may represent either the gastral caecae or the Malpighian tubes. Perhaps some internal genital structures are also visible but I have failed to interprete them. There are no traces of the ovipositor which is well observable in other lophioneurids as well as in the less advanced families of the true thrips; this indicates the specimen is most probably a male. The elongate lophioneurid mouthparts forming a cone indicate that like modern primitive thrips, lophioneurids were adapted to the sucking up of individual small objects such as pollen grains, small soft-bodied animals and insect eggs (Zherikhin, 1980). In Burmacypha the mouth cone is comparatively long assuming a rather advanced trophic specialisation. No lophioneurids have been found in the Cenozoic, and Burmacypha certainly represents a Cretaceous element in the Bur- mese amber fauna. Its zoogeographic relationships are uncertain. In the Early Cretaceous the forms related to Burmacypha were prob- ably distributed very widely if Edgariekia Jell & Duncan from the Lower Cretaceous of Australia is indeed synonymous with Siberian Undacypha as claimed by Ansorge (1996). As stated above Burma- cypha seems to be not closely related to Siberian Jantardachus, the only Late Cretaceous genus known. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. I am deeply thankful to Mr. Ross (NHM) and Dr. Rasnitsyn (Paleontological Institute, Moscow) for the opportunity to study this extremely interesting fossil. I would also like to thank Mr Peter York (NHM) for the photograph of Fig. 1. REFERENCES Ansorge, J. 1996. Insekten aus dem oberen Lias von Grimm
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