High richness of insect herbivory from the early Miocene Hindon Maar crater, Otago, New Zealand

Plants and insects are key components of terrestrial ecosystems and insect herbivory is the most important type of interaction in these ecosystems. This study presents the first analysis of associations between plants and insects for the early Miocene Hindon Maar fossil lagerstätte, Otago, New Zealand. A total of 584 fossil angiosperm leaves representing 24 morphotypes were examined to determine the presence or absence of insect damage types. Of these leaves, 73% show signs of insect damage; they comprise 821 occurrences of damage from 87 damage types representing all eight functional feeding groups. In comparison to other fossil localities, the Hindon leaves display a high abundance of insect damage and a high diversity of damage types. Leaves of Nothofagus(southern beech), the dominant angiosperm in the fossil assemblage, exhibit a similar leaf damage pattern to leaves from the nearby mid to late Miocene Dunedin Volcano Group sites but display a more diverse spectrum and much higher percentage of herbivory damage than a comparable dataset of leaves from Palaeocene and Eocene sites in the Antarctic Peninsula.