Family: Acrididae, Short-horned Grasshoppers view all from this family

Description 3/4-1" (18-25 mm). Dark brown to greenish, yellow, or red-brown. Hind femora have herringbone pattern or black spots. Hind tibiae bright red to yellowish with black spines. Pronotum has no appreciable crest. Fore and hind wings of male at rest project beyond abdominal tip. Colors paler in the South.

Food Native grasses, introduced weeds, alfalfa, grains, and crops in the Southwest, soybeans in the Midwest.

Life Cycle Female thrusts several egg masses, each containing about 20 eggs, into soft soil, where they overwinter. Nymphs appear in spring and become adults by June in the South, where they feed until December, they mature later in the North.

Habitat Fields, vacant lots in cities and suburbs, open woods, or along irrigation ditches in more arid areas.

Range Atlantic Coast to Florida, west to Arizona, north to Alberta.

Discussion Both sexes of these locusts transmit poultry tapeworms and also parasites that mature in quail, turkeys, and guinea fowl. The similar Rocky Mountain Grasshopper (M. spretus), 1 1/8-1 1/2" (29-38 mm), is brownish above with dark markings. It reached plague proportions in the West before 1900, but now is probably extinct. The "Grasshopper Glacier" near Cooke, Montana, contains millions of embedded Rocky Mountain Grasshoppers, presumably from swarms that settled on the glacier and froze.