''Prostylotermes'' is an extinct

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...

termite Termites are small insects that live in colonies and have distinct castes ( eusocial) and feed on wood or other dead plant matter. Termites comprise the infraorder Isoptera, or alternatively the epifamily Termitoidae, within the order Blat ...

in the

isoptera Termites are small insects that live in colonies and have distinct castes (eusocial) and feed on wood or other dead plant matter. Termites comprise the infraorder Isoptera, or alternatively the epifamily Termitoidae, within the order Blattod ...

n family

Stylotermitidae Stylotermitidae is a family of termites in the order Blattodea. There are two extinct and one extant genera in Stylotermitidae, with more than 50 described species. Genera These three genera belong to the family Stylotermitidae: * '' Stylotermes ...

known from two

Eocene The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the modern Cenozoic Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes from the Ancient Greek (''ēṓs'', " ...

fossils found in

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

. The genus contains a single described species, ''Prostylotermes kamboja''.

History and classification

''Prostylotermes'' is known from only two fossils, the

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of seve ...

female and a single

paratype In zoology and botany, a paratype is a specimen of an organism that helps define what the scientific name of a species and other taxon actually represents, but it is not the holotype (and in botany is also neither an isotype nor a syntype). O ...

male, both of which are inclusions in a transparent chunk of amber. The amber, number "Tad-321C" is housed in the fossil collection of the

Birbal Sahni Birbal Sahni FRS (14 November 1891 – 10 April 1949) was an Indian paleobotanist who studied the fossils of the Indian subcontinent. He also took an interest in geology and archaeology. He founded what is now the Birbal Sahni Institute of Pal ...

Institute of Palaeobotany in

Lucknow Lucknow (, ) is the capital and the largest city of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and it is also the second largest urban agglomeration in Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and divisio ...

, India. Both the holotype and paratype are composed of mostly complete adult termites though some areas of the female were lost on the surface of the amber specimen. Cambay amber dates to between fifty and fifty-two million years old, placing it in the Early to Mid

Ypresian In the geologic timescale the Ypresian is the oldest age or lowest stratigraphic stage of the Eocene. It spans the time between , is preceded by the Thanetian Age (part of the Paleocene) and is followed by the Eocene Lutetian Age. The Ypresian i ...

age of the Eocene, and was preserved in a

brackish Brackish water, sometimes termed brack water, is water occurring in a natural environment that has more salinity than freshwater, but not as much as seawater. It may result from mixing seawater (salt water) and fresh water together, as in estuari ...

shore environment. The amber formed from a dammar type resin which is produced mainly by trees in the family Dipterocarpaceae. The ''Prostylotermes'' type specimen was recovered from the Tadkeshwar lignite mine, located in

Gujarat State Gujarat (, ) is a state along the western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the fifth-largest Indian state by area, covering some ; and the ninth- ...

, during a collecting trip during January 2010. The fossil was first studied by paleoentomologists

Michael S. Engel Michael S. Engel, FLS, FRES (born September 24, 1971) is an American paleontologist and entomologist, notable for contributions to insect evolutionary biology and classification. In connection with his studies he has undertaken field expediti ...

and David Grimaldi, both of the American Museum of Natural History. Engel and Grimaldi's 2011

type description A species description is a formal description of a newly discovered species, usually in the form of a scientific paper. Its purpose is to give a clear description of a new species of organism and explain how it differs from species that have ...

of the new genus and species was published in the online journal ''

ZooKeys ''ZooKeys'' is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal covering zoological taxonomy, phylogeny, and biogeography. It was established in 2008 and the editor-in-chief is Terry Erwin (Smithsonian Institution). It is published by Pensoft Publ ...

''. The genus name ''Prostylotermes'' was coined as a combination of the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

word ''pro'' meaning "before" and '' Stylotermes'', the type genus of Stylotermitidae. The

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''kamboja'' is in reference to the Kamboja tribe of ancient India literature who settled the area now called

Khambat Khambhat (, ), also known as Cambay, is a city and the surrounding urban agglomeration in Anand district in the Indian state of Gujarat. It was once an important trading center, but its harbour gradually silted up, and the maritime trade m ...

and formerly called Cambay.

Description

Both the ''Prostylotermes'' adults have an overall coloration which is uniform brown with no change on the legs or wing scales, but with a slight lightening on the side pleurons. The specimens are dealate, having already shed their wings before being trapped in the resin. The female has a length of and the male is in length. Adults have an almost circular head, with rounded compound eyes, and

ocelli A simple eye (sometimes called a pigment pit) refers to a form of eye or an optical arrangement composed of a single lens and without an elaborate retina such as occurs in most vertebrates. In this sense "simple eye" is distinct from a multi-le ...

which are separated from the compound eyes. The antennae are formed from seventeen individual segments, with each segment gradually narrowing towards the antenna tip. Both male and female have short cerci which are composed of two segments, while only the male has short styli. The loss of a section of the abdominal wall on the female shows two eggs already developed and near the abdomen tip.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q6433589 Termite genera Eocene insects Fossil taxa described in 2011 Prehistoric insects of Asia Taxa named by Michael S. Engel