99-Million-Year-Old Hard Tick Wrapped in Spider Silk Found Encased in Amber

The oldest example of a tick wrapped in spider silk has been found, preserved in Burmese amber. It dates from the Cretaceous period, about 99 million years ago.

A unique example of a fossil tick preserved wrapped in a spider web from the Cretaceous Burmese amber; it is the oldest and only example of a tick caught by a spider in the fossil record. Image credit: Dunlop et al, doi: 10.1016/j.cretres.2018.04.013.

A unique example of a fossil tick preserved wrapped in a spider web from the Cretaceous Burmese amber; it is the oldest and only example of a tick caught by a spider in the fossil record. Image credit: Dunlop et al, doi: 10.1016/j.cretres.2018.04.013.

The newly-reported specimen is a flattened, pear-shaped piece of amber with dimensions of 14 x 11 mm.

It originated from the private collection of German collector Patrick Müller, and is described in the journal Cretaceous Research by Dr. Jason Dunlop of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Professor Paul Selden from the University of Kansas and the Natural History Museum, London, and their colleagues.

“It’s a show of behavior, really. Ticks already are known from the Burmese amber — but it’s unusual to find one wrapped in spider silk,” Professor Selden said.

“We’re not sure if the spider wrapped it in order to eat it later or if it was to get it out of the way and stop it from wriggling and destroying its web. That’s something spiders do.”

This is the first time this kind of interaction between ticks and spiders has been documented in the fossil record.

“Ticks are seldom found in Burmese amber, though the few that have been discovered were proved to be among the oldest tick specimens known to science,” Professor Selden said.

“They’re rare because ticks don’t crawl around on tree trunks. Amber is tree resin, so it tends to capture things that crawl around on bark or the base of the tree. But ticks tend to be on long grass or bushes, waiting for passing animals to brush up against them, though some of them can be on birds or squirrels, or maybe a little crawling dinosaur.”

The team took pains to ensure the ancient tick was indeed bound in spider silk, rather than fungal filaments that sometimes can grow around a dead tick.

“We think this was spider silk because of the angles that the threads make,” Professor Selden said.

“Also we show a picture of a tick that started to decay — and the fungus on that tick grows from its orifices — from the inside to the outside. Whereas these threads are wrapped around externally and not concentrated at the orifices.”

The researchers are unable to determine the species of spider that wrapped the tick because families of spiders known to catch ticks today lack a convincing Mesozoic fossil record.

“We don’t know what kind of spider this was,” Professor Selden said.

“A spider’s web is stretched between twigs to catch prey that flies or bumps or crawls into it. As prey gets stuck, it adheres to the web and starts to struggle.”

“Maybe some things can escape after some struggle, so the spider rushes to it out from hiding and wraps it in swaths of silk to immobilize it, to stop it escaping or destroying the web.”

“This prevents prey from hitting back — tinging or biting — once it’s wrapped in silk it can’t move, and then the spider can bite it and inject gastric fluid to eat it or venom to subdue it as well.”

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Jason A. Dunlop et al. 2018. A Burmese amber tick wrapped in spider silk. Cretaceous Research 90: 136-141; doi: 10.1016/j.cretres.2018.04.013

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