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Earwigs make up the insect order Dermaptera. With about 2,000 species in 12 families, they are one of the smaller insect orders. Earwigs have characteristic cerci, a pair of forcep-like pincers on their abdomen, and membranous wings folded underneath short, rarely used forewings, hence the scientific order name, "skin wings". Some groups are tiny parasites on mammals and lack the typical pincers. Earwigs are found on all continents except Antarctica.
Forficula auricularia, the common earwig or European earwig, is an omnivorous insect in the family Forficulidae. The European earwig survives in a variety of environments and is a common household insect in North America. The name earwig comes from the appearance of the hindwings, which are unique and distinctive among insects, and resemble a human ear when unfolded; the species name of the common earwig, auricularia, is a specific reference to this feature. They are considered a household pest because of their tendency to invade crevices in homes and consume pantry foods, and may act either as a pest or as a beneficial species depending on the circumstances.
The Caelifera are a suborder of orthopteran insects. They include the grasshoppers and grasshopper-like insects, as well as other superfamilies classified with them: the ground-hoppers (Tetrigoidea) and pygmy mole crickets (Tridactyloidea). The latter should not be confused with the mole crickets (Gryllotalpidae), which belong to the other Orthopteran sub-order Ensifera.
Pseudochorthippus parallelus, the meadow grasshopper, is a common species of grasshopper in the tribe Gomphocerini. It is found in non-arid grasslands throughout the well vegetated areas of Europe and some adjoining areas of Asia. It is a well-studied organism in the discipline of Evolutionary biology and was an early and important model system for the study of European phylogeography.
Tettigonia viridissima, the great green bush-cricket, is a large species of bush-cricket belonging to the subfamily Tettigoniinae.
Orthopteroids are insects which historically would have been included in the order Orthoptera and now may be placed in the Polyneoptera. When Carl Linnaeus started applying binomial names to animals in the 10th edition of his Systema Naturae in 1758, there were few animals included in the scheme, and consequently few groups. As more and more new species were discovered and differences recognised, the original groups proposed by Linnaeus were split up.
Conocephalus fuscus, the long-winged conehead, is a member of the family Tettigoniidae, the bush-crickets and is distributed through much of Europe and temperate Asia. This bush-cricket is native to the British Isles where it may confused with the short-winged conehead. These two species are phenotypically similar; however, the distinguishing factor between the two is the fully developed set of wings the long-winged conehead possesses that allows for flight. In the short-winged coneheads the hind wings are shorter than the abdomen, causing the wings to be vestigial and the species is incapable of flight. For this reason it is hard to discriminate between the two species during the early stages of their life cycle before the wings have fully developed. The colouration of the conehead is typically a grass green with a distinctive brown stripe down its back, though there are some brown phenotypes.
The cohort Polyneoptera is a proposed taxonomic ranking for the Orthoptera and all other Neopteran insects believed to be more closely related to Orthoptera than to any other insect orders. These winged insects, now in the Paraneoptera, were formerly grouped as the Hemimetabola or Exopterygota on the grounds that they have no metamorphosis, the wings gradually developing externally throughout the nymphal stages.
Chorthippus vagans, which may be called the heath grasshopper or steppe grasshopper, is a species of grasshopper belonging to the subfamily Gomphocerinae. It is found across the Palearctic through Russia and Kazakhstan, east to Siberia, and north to Denmark. It is rare in the British Isles.
Stenobothrus stigmaticus is a species belonging to the family Acrididae subfamily Gomphocerinae and is sometimes called the lesser mottled grasshopper.
Tetrix subulata is a species of groundhopper known as the slender ground-hopper, awl-shaped pygmy grasshopper and the slender grouse locust. It is found across the Palearctic: in North America, across much of Europe and Asia, from the British Isles east to Siberia, and to the southern parts of North Africa.
Tetrix undulata, the common ground-hopper, is a species of groundhopper in the Orthoptera: Caelifera.
Ectobius pallidus, the tawny cockroach, is a species of non-cosmopolitan cockroach in the family Ectobiidae. It occurs in southern England, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Portugal; in North Africa: Algeria and Tunisia. It is now known to be introduced into North America.
Capraiellus panzeri is a species of non-cosmopolitan cockroach in the subfamily Ectobiinae: commonly known by its original (genus) name Ectobius panzeri.
References
- ↑ Ragge DR (1965). Grasshoppers, Crickets & Cockroaches of the British Isles. F Warne & Co, London. p. 299.
- ↑ Dermaptera Species File: species Chelidurella acanthopygia (Géné, 1832) (Version 5.0/5.0; retrieved 3 May 2023)