The end-Permian mass extinction (EPME; approximately 252 million years ago) was the most severe extinction event in the Phanerozoic (Benton and Newell, 2014). The EPME was primarily caused by the eruption of the Siberian flood basalts (Burgess and Bowring, 2015; Fielding et al., 2019), which generated excessive emissions of thermogenic methane, CO₂, and SO₂ that cascaded rapid global warming (Wu et al., 2021; Black et al., 2018), oceanic acidification and anoxia/euxinia (Schobben et al., 2020), aridification and other shifts in the hydrological cycle (Sun et al., 2012), acid rain (Black et al., 2014), wildfires (Shen et al., 2011), and ozone destruction (Benca et al., 2018). The response of terrestrial ecosystems to the EPME is quite heterogeneous, probably due to biotic, topographic, and latitudinal differences (Fielding et al., 2019; Zhao et al., 2020; Dal Corso et al., 2020). Moreover, how terrestrial ecosystems were affected during the EPME is still highly controversial (Benton and Newell, 2014; Gastaldo, 2019). Terrestrial tetrapods and plants are considered to have been severely affected by the EPME mostly based on diversity and taxonomic composition (Benton and Newell, 2014; Viglietti et al., 2021); however, such mass extinction was questioned by a more comprehensive dataset of plant macro- and microfossils (Gastaldo, 2019; Nowak et al., 2019). Similarly, Permian insects are thought to have suffered a significant extinction (Labandeira and Sepkoski, 1993; Béthoux et al., 2005; Labandeira, 2005; Condamine et al., 2020; Condamine et al., 2016), but this was not supported by other molecular phylogenetic and fossil record analyses (Ponomarenko, 2016; Dmitriev et al., 2018; Montagna et al., 2019; Schachat et al., 2019). In addition, the ecological response of insects to the EPME remains poorly understood (Benton and Newell, 2014; Schachat et al., 2021).

Beetles (Coleoptera) are the most speciose group of extant insects (Stork, 2018), with a stratigraphic range dating back to at least the lowest Permian (Ponomarenko, 2016; Kirejtshuk et al., 2013). They have a rich fossil record since the Permian and display a wide array of lifestyles (Figure 1; Ponomarenko, 1969; Ponomarenko, 2003). Their fossil record thus offers a unique and complementary perspective for studying the ecological response of insects to the EPME. The evolutionary history of Coleoptera has been widely investigated through molecular phylogenetic analyses (Condamine et al., 2016; McKenna et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2018), morphological phylogenetic analyses (Beutel et al., 2008; Beutel et al., 2019), and fossil record analyses (Ponomarenko, 2003; Ponomarenko, 2016; Smith and Marcot, 2015). Although a long-term Palaeozoic-Mesozoic turnover of beetle assemblages is supported by almost all analyses, the detailed ecological response to the EPME and its explanatory mechanisms remain unclear. Most of the Permian and Triassic beetles belong to stem groups (extinct suborders or families; Figure 1), and thus they show character combinations and evolutionary history that cannot be inferred or predicted from phylogenetic analysis of modern beetles. In particular, two problems were ignored by previous analyses. First, phylogenetic relationships of some key fossils remain poorly resolved, particularly in their evolutionary relationships to modern taxa. Second, there are two complementary taxonomic systems for Permian and Triassic beetles: one is artificial formal taxa (based on isolated elytra that cannot be definitely classified into any natural group), and the other is the natural taxonomy (commonly based on more complete fossils including bodies and elytra). The formal taxa, like trace fossil taxa, lack comprehensive phylogenetic data (Ponomarenko, 2004), and thus they cannot be used unreservedly for biodiversity and phylogenetic analyses, but can be helpful in the morphospace analysis. These issues cloud the temporal resolution of coleopteran biodiversity in deep time and complicate the evolutionary trajectory of beetles but can be overcome through a combination of multiple analytical methods. Therefore, taxonomic diversity, morphological disparity, and ecological shifts are best evaluated jointly to better understand how the EPME has shaped the evolutionary history of beetles.

Figure 1

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Here, we compile an updated database of beetles from the Early Permian to Middle Triassic based on the taxonomic revision of fossils (including formal taxa). We analyse the evolution of taxonomic diversity, morphological disparity, and palaeoecological shifts of beetles from the Early Permian to Middle Triassic through phylogenetic and palaeoecological reconstructions and morphospace analyses of fossil material. Our results suggest that xylophagous (feeding on or in wood) beetles probably played a key and underappreciated role in the Permian carbon cycle and that the EPME had a profound ecological influence on beetle evolution. These results provide new insights into the ecological role of insects in deep-time terrestrial ecosystems and the ecological response of insects to deforestation and global warming.

Our results demonstrate that beetles display a steady accumulation of taxonomic diversity throughout the Permian (Figure 2). The earliest definite beetles are Tshekardocoleidae (including the genus Coleopsis) from the Early Permian of Germany, Czech Republic, USA, and Russia (Figure 1), although the origin of Coleoptera is dated to the Carboniferous by molecular phylogenetic analysis (McKenna et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2018; Toussaint et al., 2016). The coleopteran diversity radiation in the Middle Permian is consistent with an expansion of morphological disparity, corresponding to the appearance of multiveined, smooth, and striate elytra as well as some other patterns (Figure 4, Figure 4—figure supplement 1). Taxonomic diversity and morphological disparity were decoupled during the Late Permian when taxonomic diversity increased but morphological disparity was almost stable (Figures 2 and 4). The abrupt Middle Permian increase of coleopteran morphological disparity conforms to the early burst model of clade disparity commonly arising early in radiations (Simões et al., 2020; Hughes et al., 2013).

The Permian coleopteran assemblage was dominated by stem groups including Tshekardocoleidae, Permocupedidae (Permocupedinae and Taldycupedinae), and Rhombocolediae in terms of richness and abundance. These ancient beetles were most likely xylophagous because they display a prognathous head, a characteristic elytral pattern with window punctures, a cuticular surface with tubercles (or scales), and a plesiomorphic pattern of ventral sclerites, very similar to the extant wood associated archostematans (Figure 1; Kirejtshuk et al., 2013; Ponomarenko, 1969). Moreover, Permian trace fossils showing wood boring provide convincing evidence for the xylophagous habit of these ancient beetles (Naugolnykh and Ponomarenko, 2010; Feng et al., 2019). Aquatic or semi-aquatic beetles including Phoroschizidae and Ademosynidae, belonging to the suborder Archostemata, first appeared in the Middle Permian and diversified in the Late Permian (Ponomarenko, 2003). The three other suborders of Coleoptera, comprising Polyphaga, Adephaga, and Myxophaga, most likely evolved by the Late Permian, but definite fossils are rare at this time.

Permian beetles probably played an important ecological role in forest ecosystems because most Permian beetles were most likely xylophagous insects that consumed living and dead woody stems (Figure 3). Some Permian xylophagous beetles fed on living wood tissues (Feng et al., 2017; Feng et al., 2019), which likely reduced tree productivity and could have caused extensive tree mortality. Insect-mediated tree mortality is known to result in large transfers of carbon from biomass to dead organic matter (Seidl et al., 2018; Fei et al., 2019). The other Permian xylophagous beetles were likely saproxylic (feeding on dead wood) (Ponomarenko, 2003), and they could also impact terrestrial carbon dynamics by accelerating wood decomposition (Ulyshen, 2018). Saproxylic animals first appeared in the Devonian and are mainly represented by small invertebrates such as oribatid mites, until the Permian (Labandeira et al., 1997; Labandeira, 2007). Whereas grazing by micro- and meso-invertebrates (nematodes, collembolans, enchytraeids and oribatid mites) did not significantly affect wood decomposition, consumption by macro-invertebrates (dominated by saproxylic beetles and termites in modern ecosystems) significantly sped up wood decomposition (Tapanila and Roberts, 2012). In addition to those that directly facilitated decomposition by consuming wood, Permian saproxylic beetles are likely to have had a variety of indirect effects on decomposition, including creating tunnels that facilitate the movement of fungi into wood (Naugolnykh and Ponomarenko, 2010; Feng et al., 2017), and vectoring fungi and other decay organisms on or within their bodies, like their extant counterparts (Ulyshen, 2016). In conclusion, Permian beetles that feed on living and dead wood probably could impact terrestrial carbon dynamics by reducing forests’ carbon sequestration capacity, and by converting live materials to dead organic matter and subsequent decomposition.

The oxygen concentration of the atmosphere began to rise in the early Palaeozoic, probably with a peak in the Carboniferous and large decline from the beginning of the Permian (Dahl et al., 2010; Berner, 2009; Krause et al., 2018). The reason for this plunge was attributed to a tectonic- or climate-driven reduction in the extent of coal swamps (Berner and Canfield, 1989) or to the evolution of lignin-consuming fungi (Floudas et al., 2012). However, global recoverable coal is only equivalent to a few percent of the oxygen budget in the atmosphere, and thus cannot account for the large drop of atmospheric oxygen (Nelsen et al., 2016). Furthermore, lignin-consuming fungi may have been present before the Carboniferous (Nelsen et al., 2016). Recently, a new geochemical model proposed that the development of Permian terrestrial herbivores may have limited transport and long-term burial of terrestrial organic compounds in marine sediments, resulting in less organic carbon burial and attendant declines in atmospheric oxygen (Laakso et al., 2020). Herbivorous insects and amniotes are thought to be the major herbivorous animals during the Permian and thus are considered to be the most important drivers of the Permian change in biogeochemical cycles of carbon (Laakso et al., 2020). However, Permian herbivorous amniotes mainly fed on leaves, stems, roots, and rhizomes (Sues and Reisz, 1998; Pearson et al., 2013) and could normally digest cellulose by fermentation but could not consume lignin, as in extant herbivorous vertebrates (Pearson et al., 2013). The majority of terrestrial plant biomass is stored in forest woody tissue consisting of decay-resistant lignin (Hibbett et al., 2016; Bar-On et al., 2018). In modern forests, the total carbon stock in woody tissue (including living and dead wood) is approximately 340 Pg carbon, much more than 72 Pg carbon in roots (below ground), 43 Pg carbon in foliage, and 43 Pg carbon in litter (Reich et al., 2014; Pan et al., 2011). In extant forest ecosystems, insects may account for 29% of the total carbon flux from dead wood and thus they have a functional importance in the decomposition of dead wood and the carbon cycle (Seibold et al., 2021). During the Permian, beetles were probably the dominant consumers of woody tissue, while a few other insect groups may have sometimes fed on dead wood (such as stem dictyopterans and protelytropterans) (Grimaldi and Engel, 2005). Permian beetles had probably evolved close interactions with various microorganisms, especially lignin-consuming fungi (Nelsen et al., 2016), which also accelerated the decomposition of dead wood. The Early Permian onset of the decrease in oxygen concentrations is consistent with the origin and radiation of the xylophagous beetles in the fossil record. Therefore, we propose that Permian xylophagous beetles could have been responsible for at least part of the change in Permian biogeochemical cycles in Laakso’s model (Laakso et al., 2020).

As the most taxonomically and functionally diverse group of living organisms on Earth (Stork, 2018), extant insects have significant effects on terrestrial carbon and nutrient cycling by modulating the quality and quantity of resources that enter the detrital food web (Belovsky and Slade, 2000; Kurz et al., 2008; Yang and Gratton, 2014; Seibold et al., 2021). However, the effects of insects on terrestrial ecosystems in deep time have been viewed as unimportant or overlooked (Doughty, 2017). Permian beetles were among the principal degraders of wood and played a fundamental role in deep-time carbon and nutrient cycling and niche creation. Insects may have been one of the major regulating factors of forest ecosystems at least from the Permian.

Our results show that both the taxonomic diversity and morphological disparity dropped dramatically during the Early Triassic (Figures 2 and 4). Combined with the phylogenetic results (Figure 3), our suite of analyses yields a clear ecological signal from beetles across the Permian/Triassic boundary: all xylophagous stem-group beetles become extinct near the Permian-Triassic boundary or abruptly decreased in the Early Triassic (a pattern called ‘dead clade walking’; Barnes et al., 2021), while aquatic phoroschizid and ademosynid lineages crossed the Permian/Triassic boundary and diversified in the Middle Triassic. Coleoptera recovered in taxonomic diversity during the Middle Triassic by the rise of new predatory and herbivorous groups, synchronized with the recovery of terrestrial ecosystems (Zhao et al., 2020). However, the morphological disparity is significantly lower than that of the Middle and Late Permian due to the lack of stem-group beetles that possess complex elytra structures (Figure 4, Figure 4—figure supplement 1). Polyphagan groups increased in taxonomic diversity during the Middle Triassic, which is a transitory epoch from a Palaeozoic stem-group beetle assemblage to a Mesozoic polyphagan-dominated assemblage.

Xylophagous groups are absent or rare in Early Triassic coleopteran assemblages, becoming widespread again from the Middle Triassic, mainly represented by more derived archostematans (such as Cupedidae) and polyphagans (Ponomarenko, 2003). This gap in xylophagous beetles coincided chronologically with the gap in coal deposition (‘coal gap’), a time during which peat-forming forests were rare or absent (Figure 3B), extending across at least the entire Early Triassic (Benton and Newell, 2014; Retallack et al., 1996; Nowak et al., 2020; Zhao et al., 2020). During the latest Permian and earliest Triassic, gymnosperm-dominated forests abruptly collapsed (Vajda et al., 2020) and were replaced by other biomes (such as isoetalean-dominated herbaceous heathlands; Feng et al., 2020) in most areas due to extreme conditions including aridity (Sun et al., 2012), wildfires (Shen et al., 2011), and ozone destruction (Benca et al., 2018). In some regions, the plant extinction was less severe, or the recovery was rapid (Hochuli et al., 2010), or there may have been multiple crises during the Early Triassic (Schneebeli-Hermann et al., 2017), but even short-term ecosystem disruption could have led to extinctions among xylophagous beetles. Previous studies have not provided a clear picture of insect evolution in response to possible environmental stresses, nor of their response to the EPME (Benton and Newell, 2014). Our results show for the first time that the demise of most forests (deforestation event; Vajda et al., 2020) most likely resulted in the extinction of most Palaeozoic xylophagous beetles, analogous to the extinction of tree-dwelling birds and mammals resulting from end-Cretaceous deforestation (Field et al., 2018; Hughes et al., 2021).

Our results reveal an Early Triassic gap in xylophagous beetles, suggesting that early archaic beetles experienced the severe ecological consequences of end-Permian deforestation. Extant insects are suffering from dramatic declines in abundance and diversity largely due to the anthropogenic deforestation and global warming (van Klink et al., 2020; Wagner et al., 2021). However, xylophagous insects have been largely neglected in studies of the current extinction crisis (van Klink et al., 2020). In particular, the diversity and abundance of xylophagous beetles are extremely sensitive to climate change and can also entail forest collapse and carbon cycle disturbance (Kurz et al., 2008; Fei et al., 2019; Šamonil et al., 2020). Our findings may help to better understand future changes in insect diversity and abundance and its consequences faced with global environmental change.

All source data are available at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.7m0cfxpvd. In addition, the source data files (Supplementary Data 1-4) have been provided for figures 2-4 and appendix figures 1-10.

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Author details

1. Xianye Zhao

   1. State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology and Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China
   2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

   Contribution

   Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review and editing

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

2. Yilun Yu

   1. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
   2. Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

   Contribution

   Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review and editing

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

3. Matthew E Clapham

   Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, United States

   Contribution

   Investigation, Validation, Writing - review and editing

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

4. Evgeny Yan

   Palaeontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation

   Contribution

   Investigation, Visualization, Writing - review and editing

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

5. Jun Chen

   1. State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology and Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China
   2. Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Linyi University, Linyi, China

   Contribution

   Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing - review and editing

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

6. Edmund A Jarzembowski

   1. State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology and Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China
   2. Department of Earth Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom

   Contribution

   Investigation, Writing - review and editing

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

7. Xiangdong Zhao

   1. State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology and Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China
   2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

   Contribution

   Investigation, Writing - review and editing

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

8. Bo Wang

   State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology and Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China

   Contribution

   Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review and editing

   For correspondence

   bowang@nigpas.ac.cn

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

   "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-8001-9937

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