Pallid-winged grasshopper

Pallid-winged grasshopper
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Orthoptera
Family: Acrididae
Subfamily: Oedipodinae
Genus: Trimerotropis
Species: T. pallidipennis
Binomial name
Trimerotropis pallidipennis
(Burmeister, 1838) [1]

The pallid-winged grasshopper (Trimerotropis pallidipennis) is a common grasshopper of the family Acrididae, native to the deserts of western North America from British Columbia to Argentina.[2] They are more active during the summer months, and their pale, mottled coloration makes them hard to see against surfaces such as the granite often found in the gravel of dry river beds.[3] They grow to be 37 millimetres (1.5 in). The behavior of the pallid-winged grasshopper is apparently determined by temperature, with foraging occurring at temperatures of 24–32 °C (75–90 °F) and mating at 30–40 °C (86–104 °F).[4]

Populations of the pallid-winged grasshopper occasionally irrupt to damaging numbers. Between 1952 and 1980, there were six outbreaks in Arizona, only one of which lasted more than one year.[2]

A female pallid-winged grasshopper

References

  1. "Trimerotropis pallidipennis". Integrated Taxonomic Information System. Retrieved 14 February 2006.
  2. 1 2 Robert E. Pfadt (2002). "Pallidwinged grasshopper Trimerotropis pallidipennis (Burmeister)". Wyoming Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 912.
  3. Dexter Sear. "Pallid-winged grasshopper Trimerotropis pallidipennis". insect.org.
  4. Casey A. Gilman, Eric C. Toolson & Blair O. Wolf (2008). "Effects of temperature on behavior of Trimerotropis pallidipennis (Orthoptera, Acrididae)". The Southwestern Naturalist. 53 (2): 162–168. doi:10.1894/0038-4909(2008)53[162:EOTOBO]2.0.CO;2.
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