Amber fossils preserve ants with mites, spiders, snails and more across 99 to 34 million years
Mar 2nd 2026
Six amber syninclusions from Burmese, Baltic and Dominican deposits show ants alongside mites, spiders, snails, millipedes, wasps, termites, mosquitoes and plant material, documenting long term coexistence and pointing to possible phoretic, parasitic and commensal relationships while noting taphonomic limits to proving interaction.
- Researchers describe six amber pieces from Burmese (ca. 99 Mya), Baltic (Eocene, 55.8–33.9 Mya) and Dominican (Oligocene, 33.9–23.03 Mya) deposits that contain ants and other organisms.
- Ants in the syninclusions include stem ants, Hell ants, and crown ants, with morphological identifications tied to existing fossil ant lineages.
- Co‑occurring organisms include mites, wasps, oak flowers, moss, the spider Chimerarachne, a land snail, a millipede, termites, mosquitoes, and Neuroptera larva among others.
- Ants were frequently found in close proximity to mites in multiple cases, with measured distances as small as about 1.9 mm, consistent with possible phoresis or commensal relationships.
- One amber piece (Case 6) preserves an ant apparently feeding on substrate adjacent to a wormlike insect or Neuroptera larva, providing direct behavioral evidence in the fossil record.
- Authors caution that syninclusion proximity alone cannot prove interaction because resin flow and taphonomy can reposition organisms, and they recommend micro‑CT and Z‑stack imaging to test 3D relationships and attachment structures.
- The study concludes that ant syninclusions record long term coexistence and suggest possible evolutionary interactions such as parasitism, commensalism and phoresis between ants and multiple organisms.