Montana Field Guide

The following is taken from Hebard (1928), Brooks (1958), Helfer (1971), Otte (1981), Capinera and Sechrist (1982), Vickery and Kevan (1985), McDaniel (1987), Capinera et al. (2004), Brust et. al. (2008), and Scott (2010). The body is large and gray to grayish brown in color. The forewings (tegmina) are speckled with dark spotting, sometimes coalescing into faint bands and darker at the base. The hind wing possesses two enlarged veins, the disk is yellow (sometimes faint) with a dark crossband that is usually broken, but in some populations, it can be nearly complete. The apex is clear. The inner face of the hind femur is black and yellow with a black stripe ventrally. The hind tibia is yellow, sometimes brownish, or bluish.

Communicative behavior/Crepitation*:
This species produces the loudest flight crepitation noise of all known grasshoppers, which can be heard from >1300 feet (a quarter-of-a-mile). The flights are fast. somewhat erratic and last longer than those of the other Circotettix species, up to 5 or 6 minutes. They also fly higher than others, from a few feet to 30 feet above the ground, hovering over one area. The crepitations are not continuous but broken into bursts of varying durations. During courtship, the males stridulate with only one femur at a time and do not perform femur-tipping, which is used only in aggressive encounters with other males (Otte 1970 and 1981, and Vickery and Kevan 1985).

*Crepitation is the sound produced by grasshoppers making a clicking or snapping noise with their wings when in flight, during courtship, territorial encounters or being disturbed.

This species overwinters in the egg stage. Adults occur from late June through September, sometimes into early October (Otte 1981, Vickery and Kevan 1985, Capinera et al. 2004, and Scott 2010).

The following comes from Brooks (1958), Otte (1981), Capinera and Sechrist (1982), Vickery and Kevan (1985), McDaniel (1987), Capinera et al. (2004), Brust et al. (2008), and Scott (2010). The male body length is 30-40 mm, and females 34-49 mm.

In Montana, the Wrangler Grasshopper can visually and by crepitation be confused with any of the other two Circotettix species, the Carlinian Snapper Grasshopper (C. carlinianus) and the Undulant-winged Grasshopper (C. undulatus), as well with the Carolina Grasshopper (Dissosteira Carolina) and Crackling Forest Grasshopper (Trimerotropis verruculata).

Favors sparsely vegetated rocky hillsides, eroded areas, river and stream banks, road cuts, and grassland steppes. It can be found in habitats from the low-lying plains into the higher elevated plant zones of pine and spruce (Otte 1981, Vickery and Kevan 1985, Capinera et al. 2004).

This is a mixed feeder on forbs and mosses, preferring loco, vetch, sandwort and bladderpod (Capinera and Sechrist 1982).

Females oviposit on bare soil in flat areas or rolling open hills, and deposits 30 eggs per pod, arranged in three or four columns. The eggs are pale yellow, and about 5 mm long and 1 mm in diameter. The nymphs hatch in May to mid-June and pass through 5 instars to the adult stage (Capinera and Sechrist 1982).