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PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Figure 12. — Distribution of male specimens of Melanoplus bruneri examined from Alaska 



and Canada. 



beach heath zone, and other envu*onments. Hebard (1925a, p. 114) 

 stated that in the United States bruneri is strictly sylvan, living in 

 brushy forest undergrowth, and that this contrasts with the preferred 

 habitat in the Chilcotin District, British Columbia. In the latter 

 area Treherne and Buckell reported that bruneri normally lives 

 "among rank-growing grasses and plants growing under the aspen 

 poplar groves which often form belts separating the open range from 

 the timbered hills," also that it sometimes advances into open glades 

 and smaU mountain meadows where vegetation is thick and green. 

 Probably on the basis of these observations, Buckell (1921), in a 

 summary of ecological preferences of Chilcotin Orthoptera, classified 

 bruneri as a semi-sylvan species which extends into the geophUous 

 campestrian area where the open range adjoins the forest. The 

 described Chilcotin habitat seems comparable to the Lake Upsilon, 

 N. Dak., habitat where Hubbell (1922) found bruneri "quite common 

 in a dry clearing covered with low bushes and shrubs of various kinds 

 (Corylus rostrata, young aspens, willows, birches, etc.) and taU her- 

 baceous plants such as fireweed and goldenrod, interspersed with 

 small, grassy areas." In the prairie provinces of Canada the habits 

 of bruneri are similar to those reported by BuckeU (1921). In the 

 Cypress HiUs plateau of southeastern Alberta, as well as in the foot- 

 hills of western Alberta, where the open grasslands are replaced rather 

 suddenly by coarse plants, low shrubs, and aspen poplar leading to 

 the evergreen forest, bruneri just as suddenly replaces bilituratus as 

 the dominant species. Similarly, grassy clearings within the forest 

 margin in the Prince Albert-Whitefox area of Saskatchewan are 



