Common name - Wyoming toothpick grasshopper (Heifer, 1972).
Geographic distribution - from Wyoming spreading south to southern California, Mexico, western Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska (Otte,1981). In Colorado P. wyomingensis can be found from the valley bottoms of the eastern plains to the eastern mountain valleys (Hebard, 1929).
Habitat - tall grass in low, wet areas (Ball et al., 1942).
Food habits - eats coarse grasses, especially western wheatgrass and bluegrass. Also observed eating needleandthread, blue grama, sand dropseed, threeawn, sunsedge, Indian ricegrass and milkvetch (Ball et al., 1942; Hebard, 1925; Kumar et al., 1976).
Nymph - five instars (Scoggan and Brusven, 1972).
Adult - medium size. Shape is slender and grass-like. Color is
variable but is uniform and light; either light-green, gray, lightbrown,
pink or yellow. Face is extremely slanted. Vertex is cone-shaped, elongate
and extends a considerable distance in front of eyes. Eyes are oblong.
Antennae are sword-shaped and close to eyes. A whitish stripe extends from
the lower border of the eyes to the bases of the middle legs. Dorsal posterior
edge of pronotum is rounded. Tegmina are lance-shaped and abbreviated,
reaching the fifth abdominal segment. Tegmina are transparent to weakly
colored. Wings are transparent. Abdomen is long, cylindrical. Subgenital
plate of male is very pointed (Coppock, 1962).
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| Head and pronotum (Side view) | Tegmen |
Seasonal history - adults can be found from July to October (Ball et al., 1942).
Abundance and importance - common over most of the Great Plains. It seldom occurs in high densities and is of little economic importance (Hebard, 1925; Scoggan and Brusven, 1972).
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Biology of Common Colorado Grasshoppers
Grasshoppers of Colorado Contents