Locust Love

Now that September has arrived love is in the air.   And the grasshoppers are courting, mating and laying eggs that will produce the next generation.   

I’ve lived a good long time and heretofore have not witnessed the grasshopper courtship ritual up close and personal. Perhaps my situational awareness has improved with age or maybe I'm learning to pay closer attention to the natural world around me.  I don’t want you to get creeped-out by this or think that I am some sort of weirdo voyeur as my observations and photo chronology were quite clinical and very scientific.  A day ago I encountered a couple of grasshoppers in my garden doing you-know-what so I brought them to the countertop in the garage for a closer look.  

With a bit of web-browsing and observation this is what I've learned. 

Male grasshoppers croon the grasshopper love song to summon a female.  They do this by means of rubbing their hind femur against a forewing or rubbing a forewing against a hind wing.  Tympana - eardrum-like structures on their abdomens - allow both male and female grasshoppers to hear.  These come-hither songs are species-specific. 

In any event, after hooking-up, the smaller male grasshopper will mount the female and the female curls her abdomen up to reach the male’s reproductive organ - called an aedeagus.  In a paroxysm of arthropodic ardor the male delivers a package of sperm called a spermatophore.  

This act of mating can take from 45 minutes to a day and a half.  Yikes!

click on the image for a closer look

With her eggs fertilized, the female will then seek to lay them using the same ovipositor used during copulation.  She will use specialized horns on her abdomen to dig an inch or two into the ground, extend her ovipositor into the hole and lay a pod containing dozens of eggs.  The egg pod is shielded by a thick covering that the female secretes during this process which later hardens.  In warmer and moderate climates the eggs will hatch in a matter of weeks while in Wisconsin they will overwinter and hatch in the spring.

Yes, even in the insect world, reproduction is complicated stuff.  The next time you read-up on old testament plagues just remember that it all starts with this.  And yes - the conjoined hoppers were returned to the garden and left alone to finish their business......