The Urban Pantheist

Downtown St Louis turned out to be a fruitful place to find insects. It helped that I spent several hours in the Missouri Botanical Garden where I found this little guy. He's a male meadow katydid Conocephalus fasciatus*, a singer (a dry buzzing song) and an eater of grasses. The females use a sharp ovipositor to put their eggs in the stems of grasses, ensuring that nymphs have easy access to their host plant.



* Banded conehead

In a few weeks (if it doesn't end up in the burrow of a golden digger wasp) this little nymph of a common katydid Pterophylla camellifolia* will be a couple inches long. It will still have the shape and color that will allow it to vanish into the summer leaves. It will go through several molts and hopefully regrow that missing rear leg. If it is male it will sing the scratchy song that gives it its name.

* Leaf-wing, "Species name from Greek camelo camel, plus Latin folius (?) a leaf, referring to the shape of the wings, presumably--held over the back to form a camel-like hump(?)"

Bush katydid Scudderia sp.

This hapless insect was found missing one back leg and somehow adhered by rain-soaked wing to the wet top of one of our cars. I could instantly see it was a katydid--but not a true katydid. True katydids are famous for singing their name, sort of; it actually sounds like someone scratching out "ka-ty-did...ka-ty-didn't..." on the brittle teeth of an old comb.

But because they are the most well-known of these insects, all the vertically flattened, well-camouflaged, nocturnal long-horned grasshoppers (more closely related to crickets than other grasshoppers) are called katydids, regardless of their song. Bush katydids have straight wings--other groups have round or angled wings--and can only be distinguished by their songs or by (you guessed it) close examination of their terminal abdominal segments. The most common one in the Northeast is the fork-tailed bush katydid, which also has the most familiar song (to me) of the group.

Photos by cottonmanifesto. Location Brookline Ave and Francis Street, Boston.

Urban species #256: Greater angle-winged katydid Microcentrum rhombifolium

Tick tick tick tick tick tick ticktickticktickticktick!

This is the sound of an insect that was mysterious to me for a long time. It ticked away, slowly first, then faster and urgently, like a timer on an explosive. It was hidden in high vegetation, way up in trees and in the ivy up by our second-floor windows. I assumed it was a beetle, perhaps a death watch beetle, whatever that is, ticking away, reminding us of our limited time left on earth. As it turns out, a friend of mine in Somerville (the most densely populated city in the U.S., a little city across the river from Boston) managed to follow the sound to its source, and found something much more benign. The greater angle-winged katydid makes his ticking call, like all noisy male animals, to announce his presence to potential mates. The loud song is important, because these insects are incredibly well-camouflaged: flattened like a leaf, and including details like wing veins that look like leaf veins. I still wonder how it is that the great golden digger wasp is able to locate katydids to provision her nest, since the wasp is active during the day, and the katydids sing at night. There are six species of angle-winged katydids, and the best authority I could find on the subject omitted New England from their range maps. It is possible that they have newly spread to eastern urban areas in ornamental plantings from further west. "True" katydids, the ones that sing their names, make up a small subfamily of the family Tettigoniidae ("long horned" grasshoppers: those grasshoppers that have antennae as long as their bodies). The greater angle-winged katydid is the only long-horned grasshopper that I have encountered in the city so far.


Location: Puddingstone Park, Mission Hill, Boston.

Urban species #257: Red-legged grasshopper Melanoplus femur-rubrum

If you walk through a grassy field, or a vacant lot choked with weeds, chances are you will stir up grasshoppers. Chances are very good that one of the species you stir up will be the red-legged grasshopper. This "short-horned" grasshopper (it's antennae are considerably shorter than the length of its body) is one of the most widely distributed grasshoppers in North America. It is found nearly everywhere in Canada and the United States and in the northern half of Mexico. It feeds on a variety of different plants, including common urban species such as Russian thistle (tumbleweed), fleabane, vetch, ragweed, and many different grasses. All of these plants are prevalent in areas that are infrequently but regularly mowed, like roadsides. Grasshoppers are important prey for many different animals, especially birds, including large species such as turkeys, herons, and birds of prey (even large hawks such as the red-tailed hawk.

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