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Black-striped Stick Insect - Austrosipyloidea carterus (former Sipyloidea carterus)

Family Diapheromeridae

This page contains pictures and  information about the Black-striped Stick Insects that we found in the Brisbane area, Queensland, Australia.

Female body length 100mm
 
This is a very thin stick insect, pale brown-yellow in colour with dark brown thin lines along its body, resemble dry grass. Male and female look about the same, female is larger. We found in stick insect in bushland of  Alexandra Hill and Karawatha Forest during mid summer. The stick insect was hard to be seen. We saw it only because it was flying pass and landed in front of us among the long thin grasses. Even thought we spent minutes to locate it. 
 
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Male body length 70mm 
 
It has antenna as the same length as it body length. Its hind wings were clean in colour. 
 
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We believed it was a male and it was searching for female. It flied away a few times when we tried to take some pictures. It often flied to about ten meters away, then we had to spend another few minutes to locate it.  
 
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These stick insects are hardly be seen when they are hiding among thin grasses. We found this species a few times, every time we saw them was because the insects want to fly away when we walked across the grasses. For some reasons, the stick insect in the above photos loss its front and middle left legs.
 
Another Thin Grass Stick Insect found in Karawatha Forest in mid summer.
 
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This female was found in Mt Coot-tha on Mar 2008.  
 

Reference:
1. Insects of Australia, CSIRO, Division of Entomology, Melbourne University Press, 2nd Edition 1991, pp 400.
2. The Complete Field Guide to Stick and Leaf Insects of Australia - Paul D. Brock and Jack W. Hasenpusch, CSIRO PUBLISHING, 2009, p39. 
3. Species Sipyloidea carterus (Westwood, 1859) - Australian Biological Resources Study, Australian Faunal Directory, 1997. 
4. Grasshopper Country - the Abundant Orthopteroid Insects of Australia, D Rentz, UNSW Press, 1996, p253. 

Up ] [ Black-striped Stick Insect ] Dark-winged Stick Insect ]

                                                

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Last updated: February 19, 2009.