Salt & Pepper Grasshopper
Female, Ventral
Ellura
Red-legged Urnisa
Camouflage but Purple Foot
 
                      
Red-legged Urnisa (Urnisa rugosa)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:     Dorsal

Thank you Matthew Connors for identifying and Robert Read for helping with the id of this species for us

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".

Copyright © 2014-2024 Brett & Marie Smith. All Rights Reserved. Photographed 26-Oct-2014
This species is an Australian Native Species, not listed in the SA Murray Mallee Survey of 2010.