Aleyrodidae

Whiteflies are hemipterans that typically feed on the undersides of plant leaves. They are classified in the family Aleyrodidae, the only family in the superfamily Aleyrodoidea. More than 1550 whitefly species have been described.

Aleyrodidae

Uncredited · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Also called
whiteflyPBDB
Sits inside
AleyrodoideaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 151 million years on record.

The record covers at least 154.8 Mya to 3.6 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 165.3 Mya to 2.58 Mya.

Middle Jurassic — about 0 of 59 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 4 of 59 occurrencesLate JurassicEarly Cretaceous — about 14 of 59 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 9 of 59 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 59 occurrencesEocene — about 29 of 59 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 59 occurrencesMiocene — about 1 of 59 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 2 of 59 occurrencesPleistocene — about 0 of 59 occurrences169–163 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences163–157 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences157–152 Mya — about 2 occurrences152–146 Mya — about 1 occurrence140–135 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences135–129 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences129–124 Mya — about 5 occurrences124–118 Mya — about 6 occurrences118–112 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences112–107 Mya — about 2 occurrences107–101 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences101–96 Mya — about 7 occurrences96–90 Mya — about 2 occurrences56–51 Mya — about 5 occurrences51–45 Mya — about 2 occurrences39–34 Mya — about 22 occurrences17–11 Mya — about 1 occurrence5.6–0 Mya — about 2 occurrences154.8 Mya3.6 Mya169 Mya0 Mya

59 occurrences of Aleyrodidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

59 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

9 formations

Argiles d'lignite du Soissonnais — 49.33°N, 2.66°EKarabastau — 42.90°N, 70.00°EHotont — 47.37°N, 102.39°ETsagaantsav — 44.52°N, 109.45°EBouldnor — 50.74°N, 1.36°WEscucha — 41.03°N, 0.56°WDaohugou — 41.32°N, 119.24°ERajdanda — 23.42°N, 84.13°EHollín — 0.71°S, 77.79°W

Loading coastlines…

The named rock units Aleyrodidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 42 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Aleyrodidae and its relatives

Eocene

Where Aleyrodidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

3,762 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 29 sites for Aleyrodidae, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

32 references

Each of the 59 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 20 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Aleyrodidae

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Aleyrodidae was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itAleyrodoidea through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Westwood 1840