Grasshoppers - Classification, Distribution, And Habitat, Leaping, Body Temperature, Defense, Courtship And Mating - Size and color
females abdomen insects head
Grasshoppers are plant-eating insects characterized by long hind legs designed for locomotion by jumping. Like all insects, the body of grasshoppers is divided into three main parts: head, thorax, and abdomen. On the head are two antennae for feeling and detecting scent, and two compound eyes comprised of many optical units called facets, each of which is like a miniature eye. The chewing mouthparts comprise two sets of jaws which move from side to side. The sides of the mouth have two palps, tiny appendages for feeling and detecting chemicals, which aid in food selection. There are three pair of legs and two pairs of wings attached to the thorax, although some species are wingless. At the tip of the abdomen are two appendages called cerci, and the external reproductive organs. Females have an ovipositor at the end of the abdomen through which the eggs are laid. Grasshoppers develop by incomplete metamorphosis, passing from egg, to a small wingless larval stage through several molts, to the mature adult.
Male grasshoppers are smaller than females, and size varies greatly between species—from a length of 0.4 in (1 cm) to more than 5.9 in (15 cm). The large Costa Rican grasshopper (Tropidacris cristatus) has a 9.9 in (25 cm) wing-span and weighs more than 1 oz (30 g). Colors range from the drab shades of the field dwellers to the brilliant hues of some rainforest species. In some instances, males and females are colored differently.
Additional Topics
Grasshoppers belong to the insect order Orthoptera and the suborder Caelifera. The family Acrididae includes more than 8,000 species of grasshoppers and locusts distributed worldwide. Grasshoppers are found in almost all types of habitat including the tropics, temperate grassland, rainforest, desert, and mountains. If adverse conditions prevail, some species migrate in huge numbers to maximize sur…
Grasshoppers are eaten upon by a number of vertebrate and arthropod predators. Defense mechanisms include leaping and camouflage (blending in with their environment). For example, the grass-dwelling Cylindrotettix of Brazil changes the color of its body from straw-tone in the dry season to green after the rains. Larger species such as Agriacris trilineata of Peru's rainforests may use physi…
Grasshoppers have an amazing ability to identify their mates. Each species has its individual song, produced by rubbing or flicking the lower back legs on the forewings to create either a chirping or a clicking sound (this is known as stridulation). Females sing more softly than males, facilitating differentiation between both sex and species. Species that make no sound rely on sight and scent to …
Swarming grasshoppers and locusts can be extremely destructive to vegetation. A single swarm of African locusts (Schistocerca gregaria) can contain 50 billion individuals, and consume as much food in one day as the daily food intake of all the people in New York, London, Paris, and Los Angeles combined. Clearly, such immense irruptions are capable of causing tremendous damage to agriculture. Insec…
Citing this material
Please include a link to this page if you have found this material useful for research or writing a related article. Content on this website is from high-quality, licensed material originally published in print form. You can always be sure you're reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information.
Highlight the text below, right-click, and select “copy”. Paste the link into your website, email, or any other HTML document.
User Comments
over 3 years ago
it's a really great website and all but were is the grasshopper's infomation on the habitat because it said it had the Grasshoppers - Classification, Distribution, And Habitat, Leaping, Body Temperature, Defense, Courtship And Mating - Size and color but it din't have the habitat
11 months ago
classification of grasshooper and housefly
6 months ago
jan eric salgado
6 months ago
jan eric salgado