do you know its a nymph? To me it looks very similar to adults (unless I just see nymphs).

This might very well be a species of Melanoplus, in which case some species have wingless adults. No size indication was given, and that doesn't always matter anyway.

Hi, Finally tackled this one. I didn't know this species ranged so far southward, but it does. Blatchley lists it under the name "Podisma variegata", and quotes Morse as saying "This locust seems to be rather widely distributed in the higher parts of the North Carolina Mountains."

It is very close to Melanoplus, and I suspect that the only reason it is not included there is the complete lack of wings (or, there are some Melanoplus species such as M. viridis and gracilis that perhaps should be in Booneacris?). Blatchley thought the southern ones were a distinct species, and they do look somewhat different, but the Orthoptera Species File lists variegata as a synonym of glacialis. The subspecies amplicerca was described from Virginia, and may be the same as this one.

You mentioned that the Orthoptera Species File lists B. variegata as a synonym of B. glacialis but the current form has it as two separate species (http://orthoptera.speciesfile.org/Common/basic/Taxa.aspx?TaxonNameID=1111060). Not sure if you are referring to an older version of the OSF but perhaps an update is required in the species info page before further confusion on the taxonomic ranking of these two species is complicated further. Is there any additional publications that you can give to support the synonymy? I am unfamiliar with any!

Could just be a goof on BugGuide. Also, a few things could have happened with OSF. One is that several taxa that are traditionally considered as synonyms or subspecies have been getting separated as if species on OSF, and often it has been an action without published justification, plus it is often something that could be open to individual interpretation. Second is that a number of names that were missed and not listed on OSF have been added, and some duplicated at different rankings. Some of these appear both as synonyms and as species, some at the ranking originally described even if usually considered a synonym. Third, there are some relatively recent publications on Melanoplines that I haven't seen yet, that list a number of new and/or separated species. For now I personally tend to just err on the conservative side, and to not change things without good justification. In this case, I doubt there are two truly different things involved, but I could be totally wrong. The ones from further south [variegata] do look a bit different (at least a good subspecies), but I'm not so sure that they are more than geographic subspecies. Even if different, they may end up still placed under one heading as a "species group", because they may be impossible to distinguish reliably in photos, and geography could be the only means left. I need to learn more.

I have been known to ignore OSF too, when I know the insects really well, but that's not the case here.