Author Description

Approximately 25% of all animal specimens enclosed in Baltic amber belong to the group of aquatic insects. Most of these insects are amphibious and inhabit aquatic ecosystems at least in their larval stages. Like a great palaeontological puzzle, individual inclusions of amber are assembled and create a clear and beautifully elaborate mosaic of nature fifty million years ago, based on the aquatic insect orders Odonata, Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, aquatic Hemiptera (Heteroptera), aquatic Neuroptera, Megaloptera, aquatic Coleoptera, Trichoptera and aquatic Diptera, including Amphipoda and Isopoda amongst the crustaceans, altogether illustrated in Aquatic Insects in Baltic Amber. A number of fossilised dipteran and neuropteran species of Baltic amber are described for the first time. Interestingly, the high abundance of aquatic insects in Baltic amber is directly related to the genesis of amber. Therefore, one chapter is dedicated to a discussion on the formation of amber and on the palaeoecology of the Eocene ""amber forest"". In applying the ""principle of Actuality"", which states that ""the present is key to the past"", the amber taphocoenosis allow recreations of aquatic systems of the early Tertiary period, fifty million years ago. In the appendix an updated systematic list of all described aquatic insects and crustaceans of Baltic amber is included as well as an extensive list of literature.