From setae to scales: Burmese amber fossils reveal the early Cretaceous innovation of body coverings in scaly crickets

Scales have evolved independently in multiple insect orders, contributing to color diversity through both pigmentary and structural mechanisms. Within Orthoptera, the subfamily Mogoplistinae (Grylloidea: Mogoplistidae) represents the sole lineage bearing specialized scales, yet the evolutionary origins of this unique body covering remain poorly understood. Here, we report four new species critical to resolving this question: Protomogoplistes ciliatus sp. nov., Crinitipes calvus gen. et sp. nov., Burmamogoplistes acutifolius gen. et sp. nov., and Angustisquama bicolor gen. et sp. nov. We demonstrate that Mogoplistinae scales are derived from modified setae, and our results reveal that scale evolution in Mogoplistidae followed an \"innovation-first, radiation-later\" trajectory, with this key innovation emerging by the mid-Cretaceous. The development of scales likely served as a pivotal driver, facilitating Mogoplistinae's subsequent ecological diversification., , # Data from: From setae to scales: Burmese amber fossils reveal the early Cretaceous innovation of body coverings in scaly crickets

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.v15dv4283](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.v15dv4283)

## Description of the data and file structure

\# Supplementary Data for the manuscript titled: \"From setae to scales: Burmese amber fossils reveal the Early Cretaceous innovation of body coverings in scaly crickets.\"

The dataset comprises the following components:

1\. Tree files and corresponding R scripts necessary for ancestral state reconstruction;

2\. Phylogenetic morphospace tree files with associated R scripts;

3\. TNT and NEX format files used for phylogenetic analysis

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The Ancestral_state_reconstruction folder contains the following files:

1\. morphology.nex.con.tre.phy (phylogenetic tree file based on tip-dating using the morphological matrix)

2\. total.nex.con.tre.phy (phylogenetic tree file based on total-evidence matrix)

3\. time_tree.R (R script for v...,