Mimetic Gumleaf Grasshopper - Goniaea opomaloides
Family Acrididae
This page contains pictures and information about the Mimetic Gumleaf Grasshoppers that we found in the Brisbane area, Queensland, Australia.
- Female, body length 40mm
- This is another species of grasshopper camouflages in dry gum leaf colour. This species is the smallest in size among the four species of Gumleaf Grasshoppers that we found. They are common in dry Eucalypts forest in Brisbane. They live in the dry leaf litter on ground. However, they are sometimes found feeding on green leaves trees.
- The grasshopper has the brown body and yellowish to greenish blue hind wings. They have no or very minor trace of a carina. Most females have bluish purple hind tibiae although some females with reddish tibiae. Their antenna are uniform colour, same colour as body.
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- They rest among gum leaves on the forest ground. When we were bushwalking in the Eucalyptus forest in White Hill, Brisbane, we usually disturbed one or two of them for every step we walked. They jumped and flied to about a meter away and disappeared in the the dry gum leaves background.
Female
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- Karawatha Forest, She-oak Area, Dec 2007
Males
- Body length 30mm
- Males are looked the same as female but smaller in size.
- In the photos, the male Mimetic Gumleaf Grasshopper was targeting a female of the wrong species. The female was the 5th instars nymph of Common Pardillana.
Nymph
- Young instars 4th instars 5th instars
- Reference:
- 1. Grasshopper Country - the Abundant Orthopteroid Insects of Australia, D Rentz, UNSW Press, 1996, p188.
- 2. A Guide to Australian Grasshoppers and Locusts - DCF Rentz, RC Lewis, YN Su and MS Upton, 2003, p241.
