The genus faces immense logging pressure through much of its modern range 38. Agathis trees are large-statured keystone species 38, often emerging prominently above angiosperms in the canopy, and they host diverse animal and fungal communities 39, 40. 17 species in lowland to upper montane rainforests in Australasia and across WallaceвЂ™s Line to Sumatra in Malesia 38. The separation of South America and Antarctica and associated cooling and aridification 36, 37 presumably led to the loss of suitable habitat and the extinction of Agathis in South America along with other paleo-Antarctic genera 5, but the genus persists today with ca. All previous Agathis fossils had come from the late Paleocene to early Miocene of Australia and the late OligoceneвЂ“Miocene of New Zealand, with no reports of unequivocal associated insect damage 33, 34, 35. Older fossils of the agathioid clade belong to extinct taxa that lack distinctive characters of its two living genera, Wollemia and Agathis 7, 30, 31, 32. The fossils document the evolution of the genus from an early Paleocene stem lineage to an Eocene member of the Agathis crown 7. Recently, the first South American members of the Old World broadleaved conifer genus Agathis (kauris, dammars Araucariaceae), including its oldest known representatives, were recognized from multiple vegetative and reproductive organs found in early Paleocene 7, early and middle Eocene 22, and probably in terminal Cretaceous 7 floras of central Patagonia, Argentina. The early Paleogene floras of Gondwanan Patagonia hosted diverse insect-herbivore communities based on the richness of insect feeding damage on fossil leaves 24, 25, 26 and body fossils 27, 28, 29, but whether the ancient insect communities or ecological associations tracked their host plants across later range shifts has been unknown. A number of angiosperm 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, fern 20, and conifer 21, 22, 23 genera with latest Cretaceous to Eocene fossil records in Patagonia exhibit this pattern of Old World survival 5. Many of the survivor lineages were sheltered in Australia as the continent moved northward to its eventual, late Oligocene collision with Asia, initiating new biotic interchanges 4, 5, 9, 10, 11. These biogeographic connections derive from the former presence of mesic austral rainforests toward the end of Gondwana, which were nearly exterminated following the final separation of South America, Antarctica, and Australia starting from the middle Eocene. Terminal Cretaceous to Eocene floras from Patagonia, Argentina show affinities with fossil floras from Australia and other southern land masses, as well as living subtropical and tropical montane rainforest floras from Australasia to Southeast Asia 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. The living associations, mostly made by still-unknown culprits, point to previously unrecognized biodiversity and evolutionary history in threatened rainforest ecosystems. The similar suite of damage, unique to fossil and extant Agathis, suggests persistence of ecological guilds and possibly the component communities associated with Agathis since the late Mesozoic, implying host tracking of the genus across major plate movements that ledВ to survival at great distances. Very similar damage was found on fossil and modern Agathis, including blotch mines representing the first known CretaceousвЂ“Paleogene boundary crossing leaf-mine association, external foliage feeding, galls, possible armored scale insect (Diaspididae) covers, and a rust fungus (Pucciniales).

18вЂ‰Myr and compare it with damage on extant Agathis. We report insect-feeding and fungal damage on Patagonian Agathis fossils from four latest Cretaceous to middle Eocene floras spanning ca. However, it is unknown whether dependent ecological guilds or lineages of associated insects and fungi persisted on Gondwanan host plants like Agathis through time and space. For example, the oldest fossils of the Malesian and Australasian conifer Agathis (Araucariaceae) come from the early Paleocene and possibly latest Cretaceous of Patagonia, Argentina (West Gondwana). Many plant genera in the tropical West Pacific are survivors from the paleo-rainforests of Gondwana.

Persistent world mount and blade