The Devastators

This weekend at Canyon Trail Park, El Cerrito, we happened to stepped upon a field that was infested -- or should we say devastated -- by Devestator Grasshoppers (Melanoplus devastator)!

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Canyon Trail Park is a pretty nice site for finding Pipevine Swallowtails (Battus philenor). It happens to be one of the few natural areas left with a stand of wild-growing California Pipevine (Aristolochia californica) and, as you could probably guess, that was what we had originally come for this Sunday 6/26.

​There, the pipevine grows atop an elevated (mountainous) area where there are big trees and other vines (bramble and ivy) that provide with the shade it like and also something for it to crawl on. On the other hand, the bottom portion of this area is a very open area consisting of a large field of dried grass interspersed with a few little shrubs and Coast Live Oak trees (Quercus agrifolia). Yesterday (6/25) we had found a curious looking grasshopper nymph among the grasses as we were picking pipevine leaves for our caterpillars. At the time it was starting to get dark so it was difficult to catch or see if there were any more.

But today, when we came again in the blazing hot afternoon, we immediately realized that they place was covered in these grasshoppers. As soon as we step foot in their territory, they would spring out in front of us like a bunch of bullets to avoid our step. They were all about the same size, probably somewhere in the middle instars. With so many of them hopping in every direction, there were clearly far too many of them for us to catch (not that we would want to anyway) so, equipped with a little plastic container, we ended up just snagging two of them so we could later observe and identify them. 

After we got home, we identified these grasshoppers as Devasting Grasshoppers (Melanoplus devastator). One of them had even molted on the way and we decided took them both outside to get a few shots, but unfortunately one of them escaped in the process. With the remaining grasshopper, we decided that we may as well try to make a home for it since we weren't going to be letting it go any time soon. However,  we had never raised any of these kinds of grasshoppers, with the only grasshopper we have kept being the Pallid-wing Grasshopper (​Trimerotropis pallidipennis). Whenever we had tried to keep these, they have always died within a week or so because we could not figure out a suitable habitat and what they preferred to eat. Luckily, the little devastator seemed to be pretty happy in the plastic container it was caught in and we left it in there with a few fresh weeds we had picked in our yard. We had seen the Pallid-wings eating dead grass and because we had found the Devastating Grasshoppers in dead grass field, we were afraid it might not readily accept the fresh weeds but it did. Hopefully, we can keep it alive and see how beautiful it becomes when it is an adult!

- Brian