The winter of 2020/21 was the one for which most people had been wishing. The refrain “I want a cold winter to kill all the bugs,” had been a frequently express preference during the hot humid days of August and September 2020.
Still, it was nowhere near cold enough to deplete panhandle Florida’s insect population which has recently been reactivating. Unfortunately, grasshoppers are growing with all the others and have an appetite for foliage in huge quantities.
This ancient pestilence has been written about since the dawn of recorded history. Rameses II, well-known Pharaoh of Egypt’s 19th dynasty, had problems with this insect genus.
This Pharaoh had an impressive army which had humiliated the Hittites and the Amorites. He also had a generous supply of chariots, the high-tech Bronze Age equivalent of a cruise missile.
This armory proved no value against the locust or, as they are commonly known today, grasshoppers. Individually, there is little threat from a grasshopper, but if one brings a million ravenous family members there will be devastation.
Lubber grasshoppers are actively eating and growing, all too often at the expense of home landscapes. If not controlled, they have the capability to damage much of the desirable (and tasty) ornamentals in residential settings.
From a biological perspective locusts are the swarming phase of certain species of short-horned grasshoppers in the family Acrididae, such as the American bird grasshopper, a panhandle Florida native. It is worth noting there are native flightless grasshoppers which never achieve the infamous status of being a locust.
Grasshoppers are among the most abundant herbivores in the local grassland ecosystems. On the bright side, they are an important source of food for wildlife, especially for birds.
In total there are about 70 difference species of grasshoppers in Florida. Some species, however, are quite rare, endangered, or are unique to Florida.
Grasshopper species tend to have similar life histories. Eggs are deposited in soil clumped together in pods. Typically, there are five or six nymph stages between the egg and adult stages.
Normally there is only one complete life cycle per year, but several species can have more than one generation. This high reproduction rate is a hallmark of locusts or the flying grasshoppers.
The females and males look alike, but they can be distinguished by looking at the end of their abdomens. The male has a distinct boat-shaped tip to their backside.
The female grasshopper has two serrated valves which can be either apart or kept together. These valves are used for digging the hole in which an egg pod is deposited.
Large grasshoppers are most likely to be noticed in mid to late summer and to earn their status as pest at that time. In fact, they are present during the entire warm season, with their growth and increasing size elevating their profile as the season progresses.
Like with many insects, feeding habits can vary greatly among the species of grasshopper. Some will feed only on grasses, some only on broadleaf plants, while others feed on a wide selection of plants.
Many species will consume dried plant material as well as green vegetation and even exhibit cannibalism when the situation dictates. Typically, grasshoppers will move on when plants are depleted and stripped bare.
At that point they relocate to the next meal site. To support the swarm this movement can be into nearby crops in cultivated fields and pastures or to a residential landscape with tasty shrubbery.
While they are cute little cartoon like creatures now, they will be as big as cats and eating like market hogs in August. It is time to protect valued vegetation or watch it get chewed up.
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