Red-legged Urnisa
Dorsal
Eastern Urnisa
Adult, profile, Legs Up
| Red-legged Urnisa Dorsal | | Eastern Urnisa Adult, profile, Legs Up | | ||
 | Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta) | |||
| Order: | Crickets, Grasshoppers & Katydids (Orthoptera) | ||||
| Family: | Short-horned Grasshopper (Caelifera: Acrididae) iNaturalist Observation | ||||
| Species: | Red-legged Urnisa (Urnisa rugosa) | ||||
| This Photo: | Camouflage but Purple Foot | ||||
Thank you Matthew Connors for identifying and Robert Read for helping with the id of this species for us EXTRA - Photo Specific Information: The stark colours of our wildlife are often a surprise. Here we see the redness of the inside legs blending in so well with Eucalypt leaf stalks. Still can't work out how the purple feet fit in General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere After spending hours trying to separate out Urnisa species, we discovered there's an error with the habitus image on Rentz's Grasshoppers of Australia book, page 181. We also chatted with Robert about this and he came up with some very useful insights which make it much easier. He translated the orginal description; it's all quite old and confusing as many species have been synonymised into the few we can get in SA now. Sumarised here for you to be able to refer back to easily: Robert said "For the 3 SA species I would separate them as follows: 1. Pronotum with small tubercules, U. guttulosa 2. Pronotum with large tubercules close together, U. sp. 1 3. Pronotum rugose, U. rugosa" As an aside, we've been considering the binomial name more as we learn more. We attempt to use it when creating common names for inverts where they don't exist yet. Robert translated the 2 described species in this genus: guttulosa means "little drops", that is with small tubercules. rugosa means "rough" or "wrinkled". | |||||
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