orthopteran

orthopteran, broadly, any member of one of four insect orders. Orthopteran has come to be regarded as the common name for these related groups, which exhibit considerable morphological, physiological, and paleontological diversity. Although sometimes the insects are combined into the order Orthoptera, several orders are generally implied in the term orthopteran.

Among the orthopterans, cockroaches and mantids are placed in the order Dictyoptera, although they are sometimes placed in Blattodea and Mantodea, respectively, which may be considered as separate orders or as suborders of Dictyoptera. The grylloblattids (order Grylloblattodea) and walking sticks (order Phasmida) are given ordinal rank also. On the other hand, members of the suborders Ensifera (katydids, crickets, and camel crickets) and Caelifera (pygmy sand crickets, grasshoppers, and locusts) are considered to comprise the order Orthoptera. For completeness of discussion, all of these groups, handled here as four separate orders, are included in this article.

Orthopterans, abundant in tropical regions throughout the world in both numbers of species and individuals, are common in the summer months in temperate regions, when their relatively large size and chirping sounds attract considerable attention. Zoologists have long been interested in cockroaches, one of the oldest insect groups known. Most of the 24,000 species of orthopterans are plant feeders, with mouthparts adapted for chewing. Locusts, known as pests since biblical times, are very destructive to agricultural products.

General features

Orthopterans may be bizarre in appearance, unusually large in size, or show peculiar behaviour. They range in size from a few millimetres to more than 30 centimetres. Some tropical walking sticks resembling tree twigs are more than 30 centimetres (11.8 inches) long, and others, much smaller, resemble leaves of plants. The size range of present-day cockroaches is typical of the diversity of body size among orthopterans: tiny flightless cockroaches (Attaphila), living as commensals in the nests of ants, are only two millimetres long when mature, whereas a species of Megaloblatta found in South America reaches 10 centimetres in length with a wing span of almost 19 centimetres.

Approximately 24,000 species of orthopterans have been identified. Throughout the U.S. there are about 1,300 species; not all of them inhabit any one place. There are more species (e.g., 282 in Arizona) in southern and southwestern sections of the U.S. than in the North (e.g., 103 in all the New England states). Of the 600 species found in Europe, Great Britain has only 35, including four established, introduced species (adventives).

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The largest families of orthopterans are worldwide in range, although all have decreased numbers of species in cold temperate zones. Few mantids or walking sticks, for example, occur outside tropical or subtropical areas. There are about 20 mantid species and 27 walking stick species in the southern regions of the U.S., compared with the 400 mantid species and 600 walking stick species that have been identified in Central and South America. A few northern groups include the grylloblattids and several genera of grasshoppers.

Importance

Among the orthopterans are many species that are either harmful to agricultural products or are pests. Grasshoppers are capable of causing widespread devastation of the agricultural crops grown in many countries throughout the world. In cattle-growing regions there often is competition between grasshoppers and livestock for available forage. Mormon crickets (a common name for species of the genus Anabrus that originated during the early years of the Mormon settlement in Utah) are major pests of both crops and open rangeland in the western part of the U.S. during seasons that are favourable for their development. Cockroaches, known throughout the world as domestic pests, are a frequent nuisance, especially in warm-temperate to tropical areas. Although cockroaches occasionally carry organisms such as bacteria or parasites that produce intestinal diseases, they are more generally considered to be mechanical carriers of contaminating filth.

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Mantids, predators on other insects, have become adapted to resemble the flowers, tree trunks, or grass stems on which they await their prey. Crickets, katydids, and grasshoppers are known for the songs they produce using stridulatory mechanisms, and research concerned with song production is an active field. The biology of migratory grasshoppers or locusts involves hormones that promote transformation of nonmigratory, solitary, shorthorned grasshoppers into gregarious hordes of locusts capable of causing great destruction. This transformation has been studied in attempts to control these pests.