EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Short-horned Grasshopper

Short-horned Grasshopper
Order Orthoptera, Family Acrididae
Southwest Oregon, USA

Explanation:  Resting on a single finger is this diminutive, young short-horned grasshopper, found in a mountain meadow in southwest Oregon. 

This is a very large (about ten thousand species) and very diverse group of insects.  Many are familiar because they are active during the day, inhabit open grassy places, and tend to jump rather than fly when approached.  Can you remember chasing grasshoppers in a field when you were a child?  (Some of us still do as adults...)  They were probably from this family.

Some species are quite colorful, sporting wings of orange or other colors that flash when they take flight.  Such color-flashing is called "flash behavior" that can serve to startle a potential predator (or bug-collector).  Flash behavior is found in a very wide array of species all across the animal kingdom, including vibrating spiders in India and yellow-winged bats in Africa.  

In large numbers, however, short-horned grasshoppers can cause great damage to agricultural crops.  Several species of short-horned grasshoppers are lumped into the overall name "locust;" they can explode in numbers and devastate vegetation over large areas.