Changes to the Fossil Record of Insects through Fifteen Years of Discovery

The first and last occurrences of hexapod families in the fossil record are compiled from publications up to end-2009. The major features of these data are compared with those of previous datasets (1993 and 1994). About a third of families (>400) are new to the fossil record since 1994, over half of the earlier, existing families have experienced changes in their known stratigraphic range and only about ten percent have unchanged ranges. Despite these significant additions to knowledge, the broad pattern of described richness through time remains similar, with described richness increasing steadily through geological history and a shift in dominant taxa, from Palaeoptera and Polyneoptera to Paraneoptera and Holometabola, after the Palaeozoic. However, after detrending, described richness is not well correlated with the earlier datasets, indicating significant changes in shorter-term patterns. There is reduced Palaeozoic richness, peaking at a different time, and a less pronounced Permian decline. A pronounced Triassic peak and decline is shown, and the plateau from the mid Early Cretaceous to the end of the period remains, albeit at substantially higher richness compared to earlier datasets. Origination and extinction rates are broadly similar to before, with a broad decline in both through time but episodic peaks, including end-Permian turnover. Origination more consistently exceeds extinction compared to previous datasets and exceptions are mainly in the Palaeozoic. These changes suggest that some inferences about causal mechanisms in insect macroevolution are likely to differ as well

Imaging chiral symmetry breaking from Kekulé bond order in graphene

Chirality-or 'handedness'-is a symmetry property crucial to fields as diverse as biology, chemistry and high-energy physics. In graphene, chiral symmetry emerges naturally as a consequence of the carbon honeycomb lattice. This symmetry can be broken by interactions that couple electrons with opposite momenta in graphene. Here we directly visualize the formation of Kekule bond order, one such phase of broken chiral symmetry, in an ultraflat graphene sheet grown epitaxially on a copper substrate. We show that its origin lies in the interactions between individual vacancies in the copper substrate that are mediated electronically by the graphene. We show that this interaction causes the bonds in graphene to distort, creating a phase with broken chiral symmetry. The Kekule ordering is robust at ambient temperature and atmospheric conditions, indicating that intercalated atoms may be harnessed to drive graphene and other two-dimensional materials towards electronically desirable and exotic collective phases.11Nsciescopu