Metaleptea brevicornis

Metaleptea brevicornis
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Orthoptera
Suborder:	Caelifera
Family:	Acrididae
Genus:	Metaleptea
Species:	M. brevicornis
Binomial name
Metaleptea brevicornis (Linnaeus, 1763)
Synonyms
Gryllus brevicornisLinnaeus, 1763

Metaleptea brevicornis, the clipped-wing grasshopper, is a species of grasshopper from North America.

Distribution

A clipped-wing grasshopper captured at night

Metaleptea brevicornis is found in wetlands across a large part of eastern North America, from the Great Lakes region south to Florida and Mexico. ^[1]

Taxonomy

Carl Linnaeus described Metaleptea brevicornis in his 1763 work Centuria Insectorum under the name Gryllus brevicornis. The genus Metaleptea was erected in 1893 by Carl Brunner von Wattenwyl to hold the "American species of the genus Truxalis Fabricius", including M. brevicornis. ^[2] In 1897, Ermanno Giglio-Tos designated M. brevicornis as the type species of the genus Metaleptea, and included a second species, "Metaleptea minor", now treated as a subspecies of Eutryxalis filata . ^[3] For some time, the genus contained only M. brevicornis, with two subspecies – M. b. brevicornis and M. b. adspersa – but the latter is now treated as a separate species, Metaleptea adspersa . ^[2]

References

1. Eric R. Eaton & Kenn Kaufman (2007). "Short-horned grasshoppers". Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pp. 70–71. ISBN   978-0-618-15310-7.
2. Mariano Donato & María Marta Cigliano (2000). "Revision of the genus Metaleptea Brunner von Wattenwyl (Orthoptera; Acrididae; Hyalopterygini)". Transactions of the American Entomological Society . 126 (2): 145–174. JSTOR   25078710.
3. Nicholas D. Jago (1971). "A review of the Gomphocerinae of the world with a key to the genera (Orthoptera, Acrididae)". Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia . 123 (8): 205–343. ISBN   978-1-4379-5520-0. JSTOR   4064675.