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Created by the Decision Support and Pest Management Systems Laboratory of the USDA-APHIS Center for Plant Health Science and Technology
Even commonly encountered grasshoppers can be difficult to identify using traditional dichotomous keys. The electronic key for Common Adult Rangeland Grasshoppers of the Western United States is a powerful yet simple interactive identification and information system that operates under the LucidTM system. It will allow you to identify and find information for 58 of the most common adult grasshoppers of the Western U.S. which pose the greatest environmental and economic threat. Nymphs were not included in this key, but will be addressed in a future version. This key has been designed for people with varying degrees of knowledge identifying rangeland grasshoppers.
The key contains a list of grasshoppers, their characters and associated character states. An identification proceeds as simply as this - by choosing more and more features (from the list in Characters Available) that describes your specimen. The player automatically removes grasshoppers from that list that do not match the combination of character states selected. This process of selecting character states continues until the grasshopper (taxa) list is reduced to a short list of possibilities, and in most cases, down to a single grasshopper. Character states are illustrated with images that help you understand the character and its states.
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