Grasshoppers enjoy honeymoon season
Sarah Campbell
Issue date: 10/4/07 Section: News
- Page 1 of 1
Quite obvious is the staggering enrollment here at ASU, the enrollment of grasshoppers and their close relatives that is.
"They're everywhere; there was even one in my shower one day," said Lana Spain, a freshman biology/pre-med major from Wynne. "They're in the stairwells, in the hallways, and all over my car," she said.
"It's fun to flick them off the windows of my car, but that's about all I can say about that," said Jarrod Terry, a freshman psychology major from Memphis.
The reason so many grasshoppers are being spotted on campus this time of year involves the laying of their eggs and how they mature. According to Tanja McKay, assistant professor of entomology, grasshoppers lay their eggs in the fall, into about an inch of soil. These insects go through many stages of incomplete development, including the egg stage, multiple nymphal stages, and then the adult stage. The grasshoppers stay inside the eggs until they hatch in spring and early summer. By fall, the grasshoppers on campus have just completed their life cycles. These adults are more visible than when they first hatched because they grow well-developed wings as adults and are a lot bigger. The cycle begins again as the grasshoppers we see now will mate and lay their eggs all over again.
According to Mckay, the grasshoppers frequently seen on campus belong to the family of grasshoppers called Tettigoniidae. They are closely related to crickets and are in the same family with katydids. Tettigoniidae grasshoppers are commonly referred to as long-horned grasshoppers. Instead of having shorter antennae like other grasshoppers, they have long, thin antennae. Those antennae can even exceed the length of their own bodies.
"They're everywhere; there was even one in my shower one day," said Lana Spain, a freshman biology/pre-med major from Wynne. "They're in the stairwells, in the hallways, and all over my car," she said.
"It's fun to flick them off the windows of my car, but that's about all I can say about that," said Jarrod Terry, a freshman psychology major from Memphis.
The reason so many grasshoppers are being spotted on campus this time of year involves the laying of their eggs and how they mature. According to Tanja McKay, assistant professor of entomology, grasshoppers lay their eggs in the fall, into about an inch of soil. These insects go through many stages of incomplete development, including the egg stage, multiple nymphal stages, and then the adult stage. The grasshoppers stay inside the eggs until they hatch in spring and early summer. By fall, the grasshoppers on campus have just completed their life cycles. These adults are more visible than when they first hatched because they grow well-developed wings as adults and are a lot bigger. The cycle begins again as the grasshoppers we see now will mate and lay their eggs all over again.
According to Mckay, the grasshoppers frequently seen on campus belong to the family of grasshoppers called Tettigoniidae. They are closely related to crickets and are in the same family with katydids. Tettigoniidae grasshoppers are commonly referred to as long-horned grasshoppers. Instead of having shorter antennae like other grasshoppers, they have long, thin antennae. Those antennae can even exceed the length of their own bodies.
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