Lygaeidae

The Lygaeidae are a family in the Hemiptera, with more than 110 genera in four subfamilies. The family is commonly referred to as seed bugs, and less commonly, milkweed bugs, or ground bugs. Many species feed on seeds, some on sap or seed pods, others are omnivores and a few, such as the wekiu bug, are insectivores. Insects in this family are distributed across the world.

Lygaeidae

Bale & Danielsson; Bannwarth, Th.; Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company; Godman, Frederick Du Cane; Hanhart; Horma… · Public Domain · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Also called
milkweed bugPBDB
Sits inside
LygaeoideaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 161 million years on record.

The record covers at least 165.3 Mya to 3.6 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 170.9 Mya to 1.4 Mya.

Middle Jurassic — about 1 of 85 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 1 of 85 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 9 of 85 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 85 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 85 occurrencesEocene — about 39 of 85 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 15 of 85 occurrencesMiocene — about 17 of 85 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 3 of 85 occurrencesPleistocene — about 0 of 85 occurrences174–168 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences168–163 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences157–151 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences151–145 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences122–116 Mya — about 6 occurrences116–110 Mya — about 3 occurrences58–52 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences52–46 Mya — about 2 occurrences46–41 Mya — about 5 occurrences41–35 Mya — about 22 occurrences35–29 Mya — about 12 occurrences29–23 Mya — about 11 occurrences23–17 Mya — about 3 occurrences17–12 Mya — about 13 occurrences12–5.8 Mya — about 2 occurrences5.8–0 Mya — about 3 occurrences165.3 Mya3.6 Mya174 Mya0 Mya

85 occurrences of Lygaeidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

85 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

17 formations

Florissant — 38.92°N, 105.28°WRott — 50.75°N, 7.26°EUpper Freshwater-Molasse — 47.67°N, 8.93°EEifel — 50.11°N, 6.82°EGurvan-Eren — 48.07°N, 91.65°EGurvan-Eren — 46.38°N, 93.95°EBouldnor — 50.74°N, 1.36°WMogotuin — 44.12°N, 106.92°ENiveau du gypse d'Aix — 43.52°N, 5.45°EHanshan — 31.74°N, 118.06°EHydrobienkalk — 50.04°N, 8.24°ECypris — 50.08°N, 12.54°ERenova — 45.21°N, 112.18°WTurga — 52.96°N, 117.78°ERita Blanca — 35.71°N, 102.45°WMessel — 49.93°N, 8.75°EKarabastau — 42.69°N, 70.41°EShanwang — 36.55°N, 118.71°E

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Lygaeidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 16 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Lygaeidae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Lygaeidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

2,014 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 43 sites for Lygaeidae, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

30 references

Each of the 85 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 18 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Lygaeidae

Credit
Bale & Danielsson; Bannwarth, Th.; Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company; Godman, Frederick Du Cane; Hanhart; Horma…
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Lygaeidae was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itLygaeoidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Schilling 1829