Bicoloured Cedarinia - Cedarinia sp.
Family Acrididae
This page contains pictures and information about the Bicoloured Cedarinia Grasshoppers that we found in the Brisbane area, Queensland, Australia.
- Body length female 35mm, male 20mm
- Both female and male of this grasshopper have very tiny wings. The female size is more than double of the male. The female is pale brown in colour. The male is darker in colour and look quite different too.
- We first found this female grasshopper near Bulimba Creek in Brisbane. We found two of them, one was on the ground and one was one the tree about a meter from ground. They were pale grown in colour, their wings are not developed so we thought they are immature nymphs. We brought one home to see how they develop into adult.
- Two days later, we saw the "nymph" laid eggs, as shown in the above picture. We then understood that she was not a nymph but a female adult. This species female is 'wingless' !. When we looked carefully at the close-up picture, we can see that she had the very tiny but fully developed wings. Other grasshopper nymphs have developing wing buds. We were not sure if the male is winged or wingless.
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- Adult male body length 20mm
- After we learnt their males are wingless, we found that they are quite common and easily found on the floor of most bushlands in Brisbane. Before, we might thought they were the small nymph and did not bother to carefully look at them.
Few weeks later, at the same place we found this mating couple. Then we knew that their males are wingless (actually, very tiny developed wings) too.
- Reference:
- 1. Grasshopper Country - the Abundant Orthopteroid Insects of Australia, D Rentz, UNSW Press, 1996, p182.
- 2. A Guide to Australian Grasshoppers and Locusts - DCF Rentz, RC Lewis, YN Su and MS Upton, 2003, p112.
