Striped Raspy Cricket - Paragryllacris combusta
Family GRYLLACRIDIDAE
This page contains pictures and information about Striped Raspy Crickets that we found in the Brisbane area, Queensland, Australia.
- Female, body length 50mm
- Striped Raspy Crickets are also known as Tree Crickets. They are brown to dark brown in colour with fully developed wings. From its sword-like ovipositor , we can tell the cricket in the pictures is a female.
- The photos show the cricket feeding on nectar from the flowers of the Large Bird-of-Paradise tree in our front yard. We took the pictures at night on OCT 2000. We noticed that the cricket climbed up the same tree at the same time every night. It did the same routine the following days, even we captured it once in a glass jar, watched it for a few hours then let it go.
- The crickets are nocturnal species and are found wandering around vegetation during the night. This cricket had a handsome face. Notice its maxillas and labium are highly developed and well extended from its mouth.
- The Cricket nests in holes in trees and between the leaf-sheaths of plants. It is wondered how they remember the ways to the food source and return to the nest.
- Nymph, body length 20mm
- On a sunny winter day morning, we saw this Raspy Cricket nymph walking across the lawn in our backyard.
- Notice their spiny front legs. This may suggested they are predator of other small insects.
- Reference:
- 1. Insects of Australia, CSIRO, Division of Entomology, Melbourne University Press, 2nd Edition 1991, pp 380.
- 2. Grasshopper Country - the Abundant Orthopteroid Insects of Australia, D Rentz, UNSW Press, 1996, p63.
- 3. Insects of Australia and New Zealand - R. J. Tillyard, Angus & Robertson, Ltd, Sydney, 1926, p95.
