MANTISPIDAE (Aspock & Mansell, 1994)

Wedmann, Sonja & Makarkin, Vladimir N., 2007, A new genus of Mantispidae (Insecta: Neuroptera) from the Eocene of Germany, with a review of the fossil record and palaeobiogeography of the family, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 149 (4), pp. 701-716 : 710

PALAEOBIOGEOGRAPHY OF MANTISPIDAE

Extant Mantispidae show a characteristic distribution pattern ( Fig. 1). The advanced Mantispinae are distributed nearly worldwide, with fossil records from the Palaeogene of Europe and the Neogene of Central America and the Caribbean (Chiapas and Dominican amber). The three other extant subfamilies are more restricted in distribution. Symphrasinae occur in the Neotropical and southernmost Nearctic regions ( Penny, 1982a, b; Ohl, 2004). The Eocene S. eocenicus from Germany shows that Symphrasinae formerly had a wider distribution. A rather similar situation is found in Drepanicinae . Today they occur only in the Neotropical and Australian regions ( Ohl, 2004). The single fossil drepanicine species, G. asiatica from Kazakhstan, is considered to belong to an extant genus that is currently widely distributed in the Neotropical region. Calomantispinae at present occur only in Central America to the southern Nearctic region and Australia. No fossil record of this group is known.