The fossil leaves associated with insect damages from the upper Miocene Bangmai Formation of Lincang,Yunnan,northwest China,could provide a window how these two groups coevolved.233 specimens were assessed for the diversity and frequency of insect herbivory.We also examined the percent of leaf area removed by insects as a measure of the effect of herbivory.Six principal categories of damage are identified in this study namely leaf mining,hole feeding,surface feeding,skeletonizing,galling and marginal feeding.These traces indicate that insects interacted with plants for various purposes,including feeding and sheltering.Furthermore,these traces tend to suggest that most diversity of taxa from the Bangmai Formation in late Miocene are consisting to present,and the persistence of the insects in Yunnan since Miocene may be due to the stable climatic conditions of the Yunnan Province throughout the Neogene.On the basis of comparison with extant taxa,possible leaf feeders could have belonged to the insect orders Coleoptera,Lepidoptera and Hemiptera.Although the morphology of the phytophagous insects associated with the fossil leaves is unknown,present findings reveal that many modern plant-insect relationships were established by the late Miocene and continue to the present,shaping both the present day flora and fauna.The herbivory averages and the less functional feeding groups of galling suggest that the climate in Lincang was humid and tropical in the late Miocene.