Fontana Grasshopper - Trimerotropis fontana

Just commenting on one of these,

but comment applies to this group from Mt. Pinos; and related to comments under the T. titusi specimen a few days ago. Largely supposition, but I definitely can't see these as being T. fontana. They dodn't even bring T. fontana to mind when I am looking at them in the field. The T. fontana found with them is totally different, and these don't even behave like T. fontana. Everywhere I have found these, I have also found T. fontana too, quite different, no intermediates (at least none that looked intermediate to me). When looking at these there are usually only a few real T. fontana around, but if I move more in among the trees, these tend to vanish and T. fontana is more common. Sneeking suspicion, if DNA samples were compared, these probably aren't even related to T. fontana. I need to compare them with "classic" T. topanga, but they do fit published descriptions of that name (and I'm certain some of these have been included under that name in published records). They also come pretty close to fitting (in print) Sph. bunites. I'm begining to think this thing ranges north from at least as far south as the San Jacintos and Santa Monicas right up the east side of the sierras to the Shasta area and maybe even into Oregon, and that it has been confused with several other things. Behaves more like a Spharagemon or red-legged Trimerotropis than like most blue-legged species (but T. inconspicua & T. bifasciata seem related, even if clearly different). T. fontana seems to be something of a dumping ground name for anything with blue hind tibia that doesn't fit neatly elsewhere. [I'm not even sure if all of the "synonyms" listed under T. fontana apply to the same species.

… David J. Ferguson, 10 October, 2017 - 12:11pm

I thought the same, but I'm going off my correspondence with with D. Lightfoot. In terms of behavior/sound I've seen the same things in the dark/typical T. fontana. In open burned areas they act and sound just like the guys in the openings on Mount Pinos (I think this series was photographed in the same area you were; I also saw the same thing with the dark T. fontana nearer the trees). The T. fontana behaving like this in the burned areas are uniformly dark, I'm assuming as a response to substrate color. It seems like whenever there is an intersection of T. fontana and light substrate guys like these start cropping up. I have a series of males to go with the females that I posted, a bunch more from the eastern Sierras, and a bunch from the Valley of the Falls too. None have the tooth/node.

Behaviorally, the oddball T.fontana don't match the T. topanga from the San Jacintos, T. topanga seemed to act and sound more like T. californica and T. titusi. I only had a limited window in the San Jacintos, but I didn't see any T. fontana typical or otherwise; T. pallidipennis was the only other Trimerotropis with the T. topanga.

In terms of S. bunites, these are the guys that I vetted through D. Lightfoot: http://bugguide.net/node/view/1451103/bgimage. I think he said that the speckled appearance and beefy antennae were some of the characteristics he was going off and that mine had greener wings than he was used to seeing. I only had these at the Leviathan Mine area and Dunderberg meadow area. Niche wise, they seemed to like the same sort of habitat as T. occidentalis and that's what I thought they were when I photographed them.

… Alice Abela, 10 October, 2017 - 2:19pm

I just have to add, looking at all these guys I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around them all being T. fontana...

… Alice Abela, 11 October, 2017 - 12:27am