What’s new: A recent study has identified 16 new-to-science species of grasshoppers living in the deserts of the U.S. and Mexico. One of the grasshoppers was named after the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, while others reference actors from shows like Star Trek. What the study says: The grasshopper genus Agroecotettix, known to live in very dry, scrub landscapes in the U.S. and Mexico, was first described in 1908. Until 1922, only three species of Agroecotettix grasshoppers had been described. This remained the case until JoVonn Hill, director of the Mississippi Entomological Museum at Mississippi State University, U.S, along with collaborators, decided to look closely at various Agroecotettix specimens held by other institutions: the University of Michigan’s Museum of Zoology, Drexel University’s Academy of Natural Sciences, Brigham Young University’s Arthropod Museum, and the University of Kansas’s Natural History Museum. Additionally, Hill had himself collected many Agroecotettix grasshopper specimens during his fieldwork in Texas between 2018 and 2023. By studying the physical characteristics of these grasshoppers, from the shapes and sizes to the colors of their body parts, the researcher found there were 16 new-to-science species of the Agroecotettix, which, Hill writes, can be commonly called the “arid scrub jumpers.” This brings the total number of known Agroecotettix species to 19. The newly described species have colorful names. Two were named after actors from Star Trek: The Next Generation: LeVar Burton (A. burtoni) and Michael Dorn (A. dorni). Another nod to Star Trek is A. idic, which stands for “Infinite Diversity in…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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