Plant Insect-Interactions in Jurassic Fossil Flora from Sri Lanka

Early Jurassic fossil plants from sedimentary rocks of Tabbowa, Sri Lanka show a variety of evidence for plant-insect interactions indicative of a terrestrial habitat prevailed in the Gondwanaland. The observed interactions are skelitonizing, blotch and galls, ovipositions or coprolites, leaf mines and leaf chewing. These traces indicate that insects had associated the plants for various purposes, such as feeding, ovipositioning and sheltering for insect larvae etc. Further, these morphotraces tend to pin point some similarities of plantinsect interactions among extant plant species such as Piper betle and Musa sp. local plants of Sri Lanka. Although the taxonomic morphology of the phytophagous insects associated with fossil samples are unknown, present findings reveal that observed plant-insect relationships existed during early Jurassic period and continued up to present, having a role in the coevolution of present day flora and fauna.