Species Xanthippus corallipes - Red-shanked Grasshopper

Xanthippus corallipes (Haldeman)

Orig. Comb: Oedipoda corallipes Haldeman, 1852. Type locality: Valley of Great Salt Lake, Utah

Syns:

A widespread variable species that has been named several times, with most of the names having been originally placed within two or three different genera.

A highly variable stocky and usually large species, with much regional variation in size, wing length, and in the nature of the spot pattern of the body. Almost always with at least some red coloring on inner hind femur and the hind tibiae. The hind femur is broad with the lower flange distinctly wide. Rarely without a pair of narrow pale stripes along the top edge of both sides of the folded wings and usaully also the thorax. Wings have the dark band outside of the mid line of the wing with a long dark "spur" reaching toward the base near the costal margin. The wing disk is always yellow east and south of the Rockies, but west of the Great Plains and northward in western Canada may also be orange to red or occasionally deep pinkish. Orange-red to red is the predominant wing color in most of the Great Basin. The pronotum is usually nearly flat on top, rough and tubercled, and with the median carina low, twice cut, and often obliterated between the cuts. The lateral edge of the "metazona" (the rear portion of the pronotum behind the main transverse groove) is usually also angled and often has a bit of a ridge. The "lateral lobes" of the pronotum (the parts on the side of the thorax) usually have the front and back roughly parallel (sometimes narrowing a little downward, but rarely widening). There is usually distinct sculpturing on the face and between the eyes that is made up of raised ridges (many related species have these areas much smoother).

Depends on what is included within the species, versus what is separated out as a distinct species. In the broader sense, it ranges through grasslands and deserts from se. Alaska, the Arctic coast (nw. corner of the NW Territories & proably the Yukon) south into central Mexico and from California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia eastward into southern Manitoba, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Map - OSF

Grasslands from subtropical to Boreal and Arctic, and less severe deserts, almost entirely where there is at least some freezing in winter.

mostly Apr-Aug, but yr round in AZ (BG data)

Varies somewhat with latitude, and some details might be debated. Eggs hatch in summer or autumn, and partly grown nymphs overwinter. Adults mature in spring, but the timing varies. Usually very early at lower elevations (below about 5000 or 6000 ft) at middle latitudes, but progressively later as one moves into Boreal and Mountain regions (due to the later onset of warm weather) and often later at southern latitudes (why is not obvious). Often snow can still fly when these insects are already mature. Usually the first adults appear in April, May, or June (sometimes earlier, rarely later), and live for on average 4 to 6 weeks. In southern grasslands (south from Kansas, Colorado, and Utah) adults often live very long lives and have been found surviving well into autumn and even early winter.

It is reported that this species goes through two winters as eggs before hatching, but this may be only in northern and high elevation regions, and it may vary with rainfall patterns as well. Many Grasshoppers (though largely unreported as being able to do so) seem to be able to live many years as eggs in the soil, with eggs that were produced in different years sometimes hatching en-mass together when conditions are particularly favorable. Some years (or series of years) a species may be totally absent from a region; eggs must be present but just do not hatch in those years. This species seems to be one of many in the West that may be uncommon or even absent from a region for stretches of years, only to suddenly appear by the thousands in a single year. It seems likely that many eggs have waited for several or even many years until the "right" year to hatch.

Orthoptera Species File - OSF