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Photo#48045
Dissosteira carolina? - Chortophaga viridifasciata - male

Dissosteira carolina? - Chortophaga viridifasciata - Male
Black Creek, Cary, Wake County, North Carolina, USA
April 15, 2006
This is kind of a stab in the dark, but the Carolina Grasshopper is the closest match I could find. ID?

Images of this individual: tag all
Dissosteira carolina? - Chortophaga viridifasciata - male Dissosteira carolina? - Chortophaga viridifasciata - male

Moved

Not Sure Either...
At first glance, I'd agree--it does look superficially like a Carolina. But I gather that the ridge on top of the thorax is supposed to have a distinct notch or break in it and this one's ridge looks so smooth... Maybe just the way the pictures came out...? The only sure field mark I know otherwise is that the Carolina hoppers are the only band-wings with yellow-banded black underwings (experts, please correct me if this is wrong!). Our local Carolinas always also have yellowish/black banding on the insides of their 'thighs' (I think of them as 'flash-marks'), which I sometimes see showing on images of Carolina specimens from other parts of North America and sometimes not, but I've no idea if this is another reliable field mark. The populations of this species around my place are very small and presumably highly inbred (sandy-grassy seaside dune habitat) and their base colours fluctuate wildly as it is--ours come in anything from chocolate brown through all the tan shades to rust to orange and even bright blue-grey, with equally varying degrees of mottling, speckling, or sometimes just clear. I don't know why this is... The adults are often anything BUT well camouflaged when they sit on the sand or on the roadsides, which may be exactly why their local numbers remain so low!

There are some images of other band-winged species here on this site which look to me like ID 'possible' matches to your hopper here, but I don't know their ranges or anything much about them...

 
Chortophaga viridifasciata
I believe this is Chortophaga viridifasciata - Northern Green-striped Grasshopper. They have a brown phase (usually males) and a green phase (usually females), and in my experience, the brown phase males appear first in spring in our area. They are common in early spring on woodland trails--I just saw a bunch displaying at the Eno River State Park in nearby Orange County, NC. See, for instance:

which looks close to yours.
See the very dark individual here:

I captured that one and pinned it. I believe the wing pattern verified the identification.

Patrick Coin
Durham, North Carolina

 
Interesting...
Y'know, I didn't even consider that volcano's insect could have been a green-striped male, yet when I look at your first image and volcano's specimen side-by-side, all the little anatomical specifics sure do look similar...are the males really that pale and devoid of markings sometimes, then? Amazing (though potentially confusing!) how some hopper species can vary in their colouring... I find that they can really vary in their individual size and, to some extent, shape too--your first fellow's 'ridge' looks to have a convex profile while volcano's is flatter, but I imagine that this is well within normal variation for this species. I like the 'fleshy', flattened antennae...looks 'perky'. :)

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