The Odonatoptera are a superorder (sometimes treated as an order) of ancient

winged insect The Pterygota ( grc, πτερυγωτός, pterugōtós, winged) are a subclass of insects that includes the winged insects. It also includes insect orders that are secondarily wingless (that is, insect groups whose ancestors once had wings b ...

s, placed in the probably paraphyletic group

Palaeoptera The name Palaeoptera (from Greek ( 'old') + ( 'wing')) has been traditionally applied to those ancestral groups of winged insects (most of them extinct) that lacked the ability to fold the wings back over the abdomen as characterizes the Neopte ...

. The

dragonflies A dragonfly is a flying insect belonging to the infraorder Anisoptera below the order Odonata. About 3,000 extant species of true dragonfly are known. Most are tropical, with fewer species in temperate regions. Loss of wetland habitat threa ...

and damselflies are the only living members of this group, which was far more diverse in the late

Paleozoic The Paleozoic (or Palaeozoic) Era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. The name ''Paleozoic'' ( ;) was coined by the British geologist Adam Sedgwick in 1838 by combining the Greek words ''palaiós'' (, "old") and ' ...

and contained gigantic species, including the griffinflies (colloquially called "giant dragonflies", although they were not dragonflies in the strict sense) of the order Meganisoptera (formerly Protodonata). This lineage dates back at least to the Bashkirian, not quite 320

million years ago The abbreviation Myr, "million years", is a unit of a quantity of (i.e. ) years, or 31.556926 teraseconds. Usage Myr (million years) is in common use in fields such as Earth science and cosmology. Myr is also used with Mya (million years ago) ...

Systematics and taxonomy

There is little consensus about the relationships of the Odonatoptera. What is certain is that they are a clade of winged insects that stands outside the

Neoptera Neoptera (Ancient Greek ''néos'' (“new”) + ''pterón'' (“wing”)) is a classification group that includes most orders of the winged insects, specifically those that can flex their wings over their abdomens. This is in contrast with the mo ...

. But various authors' analyses have yielded any one of three mutually exclusive phylogenies, or some variant thereof: The least problematic (in a taxonomic sense) view is that the Odonatoptera are the

sister taxon In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and ...

of the Ephemeropteroidea (the mayfly lineage), and that the

Palaeodictyopteroidea The Palaeodictyopteroidea or Paleodictyopterida are an extinct superorder of Palaeozoic beaked insects, characterised by unique mouthparts consisting of 5 stylets. They represent the first important terrestrial herbivores, and the first major gr ...

are either their sister taxon or a basal assemblage, all within a monophyletic Palaeoptera. But few recent analyses have supported this. Rather, it seems more and more likely that the Odonatoptera are the sister taxon of the Neoptera, making the "Palaeoptera" paraphyletic. The third view places the mayfly lineage as sister taxon of the neopterans, with the Odonatoptera as most primitive winged insects; it has seen little support in recent decades however. While the internal subdivision of this superorder is subject to much dispute and far from resolved, at least the coarser divisions seem to be fairly stable by now. Six orders are generally recognized, as well as two

families Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Ideal ...

incertae sedis ' () or ''problematica'' is a term used for a taxonomic group where its broader relationships are unknown or undefined. Alternatively, such groups are frequently referred to as "enigmatic taxa". In the system of open nomenclature, uncertain ...

'' and a further "family" that is almost certainly not monophyletic. Ordered from the most ancestral to the most advanced, these are:

Phylogeny

Based on the work of Petrulevičius & Gutierrez 2016. In some treatments, the Odonata are expanded to include all these taxa with the exception of the "Erasipteridae", Geroptera and Protodonata; this group is treated as an unranked clade Odonatoclada in the scheme used here. Where the Odonata are defined loosely, the term Odonatoidea is used instead of "Odonatoptera".See e.g. Trueman & Rowe (2008)

Footnotes

References

* (2002):

Tree of Life Web Project The Tree of Life Web Project is an Internet project providing information about the diversity and phylogeny of life on Earth. This collaborative peer reviewed project began in 1995, and is written by biologists from around the world. The site ...

&ndash
Pterygota. Winged insects
Version of 2002-JAN-01. Retrieved 2008-DEC-15. * 008

&ndash
Pterygote Higher Relationships
Retrieved 2008-DEC-15. * (2008):

&ndash
Odonata. Dragonflies and damselflies
Version of 2008-MAR-20. Retrieved 2008-DEC-15. {{Taxonbar, from=Q3349326 Insect superorders Extant Pennsylvanian first appearances Palaeoptera