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Home » Guide » Arthropods (Arthropoda) » Hexapods (Hexapoda) » Insects (Insecta) » Grasshoppers, Crickets, Katydids (Orthoptera) » Grasshoppers (Caelifera) » Short-horned Grasshoppers (Acrididae) » Spur-throated Grasshoppers (Melanoplinae) » Melanoplini » Melanoplus » Rocky Mountain Locust (Melanoplus spretus)
Photo#379553
Rocky Mountain Locust breeding range - Melanoplus spretus
Copyright © 2010 public domain--published 1877

Rocky Mountain Locust breeding range - Melanoplus spretus
Map showing the breeding range of the (now extinct) Rocky Mountain Locust. Plate 1 from: Riley, Charles V. The locust plague in the United States: being more particularly a treatise on the Rocky Mountain locust or so-called grasshopper, as it occurs east of the Rocky Mountains, with practical recommendations for its destruction. Chicago: Rand, McNally & Co., 1877. (Biodiversity Heritage Library) Original caption:
  • (green) Country in which the species is not indigenous; which it visits at irregular intervals; in which it is most disastrous; and which it vacates within a year.
  • (pink) Area more often visited; in which the species holds its own longer, but which it generally forsakes in the course of time.
  • (tan) Region where the species comes to perfection; in which it permanently breeds; and from which come the disastrous swarms that sweep over the first mentioned region.
  • (yellow) Area west of the mountains where the species also, in all probability, breeds permanently; from which it sometimes pushes to the east of the mountain range; and from which the California swarms probably come. (Editorial note: a later range map from the US Entomological Commission suggests that the locust only bred in this area sporadically.)

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Rocky Mountain Locust breeding range - Melanoplus spretus Rocky Mountain Locust breeding range - Melanoplus spretus
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Contributed by Cotinis on 25 March, 2010 - 9:19am
Last updated 26 March, 2010 - 1:21pm

I wanted to add
that this map is not the entire area where the species had been seen, but only are area where it was known (or at least suspected) to breed, at least temporarily. The full area where specimens turned up, and even where swarms invaded was considerably larger, reaching into California and into the Midwest.

It seems very unlikely that such a wide-ranging and successful species should simply vanish to never be seen again, but no verified specimen has been recorded since very early in the 1900's.
… David J. Ferguson, 25 March, 2010 - 10:54am login or register to post comments

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