Mimetic Gumleaf Grasshopper - Goniaea opomaloides
Family Acrididae
This page contains pictures and information about the Mimetic Gumleaf Grasshoppers that we found in the Brisbane area, Queensland, Australia.
- Female, body length 40mm
- This is another species of grasshopper camouflages in dry gum leaf colour. This species is smaller in size than Gum Leaf Grasshopper.
- They feed on gum leaves on the forest ground. When we were bushwalking in the Eucalyptus forest in White Hill, Brisbane, we usually disturbed one or two of them for every step we walked. They jumped and flied to about a meter away and disappeared in the the dry gum leaves background.
- The grasshopper has the brown body, bluish-purple hind tibiae and yellowish to greenish blue hind wings.
- Male, body length 25mm
- Males look the same as female but smaller in size.
- Nymph, 3rd instars, body length 10mm Nymph, 4th or 5th instars
- Nymph picture taken in Alexandra Hill during late summer. This species over-winters in nymphal stage.
- Reference:
- 1. Grasshopper Country - the Abundant Orthopteroid Insects of Australia, D Rentz, UNSW Press, 1996, p188.
- 2. A Guide to Australian Grasshoppers and Locusts - DCF Rentz, RC Lewis, YN Su and MS Upton, 2003, p241.
