Timing the radiations of leaf beetles: Hispines on gingers from latest Cretaceous to recent

Stereotyped feeding damage attributable solely to rolled-leaf hispine beetl es is documented on latest Cretaceous and early Eocene ginger leaves from N orth Dakota and Wyoming. Hispine beetles (6000 extant species) therefore ev olved at least 20 million years earlier than suggested by insect body fossi ls, and their specialized associations with gingers and ginger relatives ar e ancient and phylogenetically conservative. The latest Cretaceous presence of these relatively derived members of the hyperdiverse leaf-beetle clade (Chrysomelidae, more than 38,000 species) implies that many of the adaptive radiations that account for the present diversity of leaf beetles occurred during the Late Cretaceous, contemporaneously with the ongoing rapid evolu tion of their angiosperm hosts.