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| Insects of Britain and Ireland: the genera of Orthoptera |
Locusta auctt., non Linnaeus; Phasgonura Stephens
Adults nocturnal and diurnal; 40–54 mm long; grass-green, with green eyes and a brown dorsal steak on the head, pronotum, and hind margins of the forewings.
The antennae long, with well over 30 segments. The pronotum not dorsally keeled. Forewings well developed; greatly exceeding the abdomen when folded (excluding terminal abdominal appendages). Hindwings fully developed and functional for flight. Forelegs not modified for digging. Foreleg tarsi 4 segmented; mid-leg tarsi 4 segmented; hindleg tarsi 4 segmented. The hind femora smooth. The ovipositor relatively long, with the valves articulated along their length and forming a single structure; 18–24 mm long (slightly downcurved). The males stridulous. The sound production of the males alary, involving scraping the forewings together, the latter being structurally modified to this end. Auditory organs located in the fore-tibiae (sometimes partly covered by a ventral flap).
British representation. 1 species. Tettigonia viridissima (Great Green grasshopper, Great Green Bush-cricket). Native. English Midlands, East Anglia, Wales, southeast England, central southern England, southwest England, Isle of Wight, and Channel Islands.
Widely omnivorous (feeding on grasses, shrubby and herbaceous dicots, and smaller insects); found outdoors in natural habitats (often associated with coarse vegetation on waste land, in warm sunny locations).
Classification. Suborder Ensifera; Superfamily Tettigonioidea; Tettigoniidae.
Comments. The first and second tarsal segments laterally grooved.
Illustrations. • Decticus and Tettigonia (Lucas). 1, Decticus verrucivorus (Wart-biter), male; 2, Tettigonia viridissima (Great Green Bush-cricket), male. From Lucas (1920, with approximate lengths added). • Conocephalidae, Meconematidae, Phaneropteridae, Tettigoniidae: Burr. PHANEROPTERIDAE. 8. Leptophyes punctatissima. MECONEMATIDAE. 9, Meconema thalassinum. CONOCEPHALIDAE. 10, Conocephalus dorsalis. TETTIGONIIDAE. 11, Tettigonia viridissima; 12, Pholidoptera griseoaptera; 13, Platycleis denticulata; 14, Metrioptera brachyoptera; 15, Metrioptera roeselii; 16, Decticus verrucivorus. Illustrations all of females, by S.L. Mosley from Burr (1897).
We advise against extracting comparative information from the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using the DELTA data files or the interactive key, which allows access to the character list, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lacking specified attributes, and distributions of character states within any set of taxa. See also Guidelines for using data taken from Web publications.
Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 2003 onwards. Insects of Britain and Ireland: the genera of Orthoptera. Version: 14th April 2022. delta-intkey.com’.
