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Photo#1405060
Mottled Sand Grasshopper - Spharagemon collare - male

Mottled Sand Grasshopper - Spharagemon collare - Male
Lake County, Illinois, USA
July 15, 2017

Images of this individual: tag all
Mottled Sand Grasshopper - Spharagemon collare - male Mottled Sand Grasshopper (close-up of pronotum) - Spharagemon collare - male Mottled Sand Grasshopper (close-up of hind tibia) - Spharagemon collare - male

The closeup does help, and caught me by surprise
Based on coloring, I wasn't expecting it to be S. collare, so I hadn't really considered it. The closeup you added shows the pronotum crest to be even higher than I thought it was, and it shows a relatively narrow diagonal cut (the cut is usually vertical or nearly so, in a somewhat lower crest in S. bolli). The hairiness is also pretty typical of S. collare, as is the lack of dark coloring near the base of the hind tibiae.
The color pattern is odd, but I see now that you posted another from the same place and day that has a similar but somewhat less extreme pattern, and that one is also S. collare. Makes me wonder if there might be a little bit of hanky-panky going on in this area between S. collare and S. bolli or S. marmorata; resulting in just enough genetic exchange to get an unusual coloring into S. collare. Of course this is just pure speculation. S. collare is notoriously varied in coloring anyway.

 
Thanks for the info.
Recently purchased the grasshopper field guide by Capinera, Scott and Walker and still trying to figure out how to best use it.

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Appears to be Spharagemon bolli
Did you get any other photos of this one? If I'm wrong he is S. marmoratum, but the crest on the pronotum looks too high for that species (at least in this view it appears to be). Usually in S. bolli there is black on the hind tibia that doesn't show in this photo.

Moved from Band-winged Grasshoppers.

 
Probably not, but...
. . . I'll check my files when I get a chance. Would a close-up of this photo be of any use or do you need different angles of the crest or to see more of the hind tibia?

 
A closeup or higher resolution version might help a lot,
simply to see more detail.
However, a different angle showing the profile more clearly would be better.

 
Added two more images ...
... that might help.

Moved
Moved from Grasshoppers.

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