232 



JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 



[Vol. 5 



THE POSITION ASSUMED BY FEMALE GRASSHOPPERS 

 WHEN OVIPOSITING 



By F. B. MiLLiKEN, Assistant Entomologist of the Kansas State Agricultural 



Experiment Station 



In view of the fact that all available illustrations of oviposition by 

 grasshoppers represent the female with her abdomen curved forward 

 under the body, the writer was surprised while studying grasshoppers 

 at Dodge City, Kansas, during the summer of 1911 to find that none 

 of the species which were common there assumed this position as the 

 normal one. Ten Melanoplus bivittatus Scud., six Dissosteira Carolina 

 Linn., and one Schistocerca shoshone Thos., were examined while ovi- 

 positing by excavating at the side of the abdomen before the latter was 

 withdrawn from the tunnel or the insect had changed its position, and 

 only one — a specimen of Melanoplus bivittatus — had the abdomen curved 

 forward. This one had encountered an impenetrable mass of grass roots 



Fig. 3. Grasshopper ovipositing (original) 



which altered the direction of the tunnel and inclined the abdomen 

 forward. The remainder ran the abdomen down a short distance 

 below the surface and curved it backward from the body. The curva- 

 ture varied from a slight inclination to the rear at the tip to an angle 

 that brought the posterior portion of the elongated abdomen parallel 

 with the surface of the ground. No Melanoplus spretus were observed 

 in the act of oviposition, as none were found in that vicinity this year. 

 The writer has recently found a correct account of the oviposition 

 of Melanoplus differentialis by Hunter in California Bulletin 170, 1905, 

 but no illustration is given. 



