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Wasp lookalikes from 33 million years ago fooled ancient birds too

New fossil shows that precise wasp mimicry in hoverflies evolved far earlier than previously thought—and wasn't shaped by modern birds.

Děčín, Czech Republic—A newly discovered fossil from the Early Oligocene reveals that hoverflies were already mastering the art of deception 33 million years ago. The fossil, Spilomyia kvaceki, found in the Děčín-Bechlejovice site in the Czech Republic, exhibits a strikingly well-preserved coloration pattern that mimics social wasps with exceptional accuracy.

Given that all previously described fossil mimics displayed only inaccurate resemblance to their hymenopteran models, this specimen provides the first known evidence of accurate wasp mimicry. The species is named in honor of the world-renowned paleobotanist Zlatko Kvaček, who worked in the Faculty of Science, Charles University.

This discovery provides unprecedented insight into the evolution of Batesian mimicry, a survival strategy in which harmless species evolve to imitate more dangerous ones, such as stinging insects. While modern mimicry is typically shaped by passerine birds—the dominant avian insect predators in Europe today— published in Current Biology demonstrates that non-passerine birds, such as those from the Coraciimorphae and Apodiformes groups, likely drove the development of accurate mimicry millions of years earlier.

"The fossil's detail is extraordinary. It shows that the mimicry of wasps we see in living hoverflies was already fully formed when Europe was dominated by very different kinds of birds," says the study's lead researcher Klára Daňková from Faculty of Science at Charles University in Prague.

The study also notes the presence of fossilized Palaeovespa wasps—potential models for the mimic—in the same locality, further supporting the hypothesis of early ecological interactions between mimics and models.

This find not only extends the known history of mimicry in insects but also reshapes our understanding of predator-prey interactions in deep time.