{"id":12616,"date":"2021-11-24T10:14:40","date_gmt":"2021-11-24T16:14:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/?p=12616"},"modified":"2021-11-24T10:15:02","modified_gmt":"2021-11-24T16:15:02","slug":"slant-faced-pasture-grasshopper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/bug-of-the-week\/slant-faced-pasture-grasshopper\/","title":{"rendered":"Slant-faced Pasture Grasshopper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: All links below go to external sites.<\/small><\/p>\n

Howdy, BugFans,<\/p>\n

The Slant-faced pasture grasshopper is the BugLady\u2019s new, favorite grasshopper (well, not really \u2013 grasshopper-wise, her heart belongs to the lichen-y-looking Pine tree spur-throated grasshopper<\/a>).\u00a0 The two species aren\u2019t closely related, but they do have something in common \u2013 they sat still long enough for the BugLady to photograph them.<\/p>\n

Slant-faced pasture grasshoppers\/Pasture Grasshoppers\/Pasture locusts (Orphulella speciosa<\/i>)\u00a0are short-horned (short-antennaed) grasshoppers in the family Acrididae.\u00a0\u00a0They\u2019re\u00a0in the subfamily Gomphocerinae, known variously as the Slant-faced Grasshoppers, the\u00a0Stridulating slant-faced grasshoppers, and the Tooth-legged grasshoppers (because males, and often females, have \u201ca row of pegs\u201d on the inner surface of their thighs \u2013 all the better to make music with, my dear).\u00a0\u00a0The\u00a0Gomphocerinae\u00a0have a pair of disc-like hearing organs (tympana) on the first abdominal segment,\u00a0noticeably-pointed heads and backward-slanting faces, and mostly-clear wings.\u00a0\u00a0Eric Eaton, in the\u00a0Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America<\/u>, says that \u201cSlant-faced grasshoppers are disguised by their shape and are often striped to further their resemblance to grasses<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

SFPGs are found from the Rockies east to the Atlantic and from northern Mexico to southern Canada.\u00a0 They live in sunny patches of shorter grass interspersed in tall and mixed-grass in prairies, and in grazed and mowed areas (and in the parking lot at Riveredge Nature Center).\u00a0 In Wisconsin, they\u2019re most common south of the Tension Zone<\/a>, where they\u2019re out and about during mid-summer.<\/p>\n

Because this grasshopper is considered a pastureland pest that runs with a bad crowd of other pastureland grasshoppers, its biography has been pretty well outlined (it\u2019s often the most common species in the gang, but it\u2019s smaller than the others, so it may not have quite as large an impact).<\/p>\n

SFPGs are sexually dimorphic, with females considerably larger than males<\/a>.\u00a0 Adults come in a variety of colors<\/p>\n