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The fossil was encased in a piece of amber from India and is the oldest known example of a kind of social parasitism known as myrmecophily.

With enough replicates, a picture emerges of what usually happens as these beetles crawl along the evolutionary path, from free-living to an advanced state of myrmecophily.

What both pselaphines and aleocharines show is that species that exhibit an advanced state of myrmecophily tend to demonstrate analogous elaborate morphological and behavioural modifications.

They radiated extensively in the very habitats dominated by ants, we think by exploiting the same defensive preadaptations that make these beetles so prone to myrmecophily.

That the same regions of the body have been co-opted suggests that some shared ancestral precursor structure may exist there—a gland, some bristles—which can be readily modified into a device for myrmecophily.