''Miramella alpina'', the 'Green Mountain Grasshopper', is a species of 'short-horned grasshoppers' belonging to the family

Acrididae The AcrididaeMacLeay WS (1821) ''Horae Entomologicae or Essays on the Annulose Animals'' 2 are the predominant family of grasshoppers, comprising some 10,000 of the 11,000 species of the entire suborder Caelifera. The Acrididae are best known bec ...

subfamily

Melanoplinae The Melanoplinae are a subfamily of grasshoppers in the family Acrididae. They are distributed across the Holarctic and Neotropical realms. They are one of the two largest subfamilies in the Acrididae. As of 2001 the Melanoplinae contained over 8 ...

Subspecies

* ''Miramella alpina'' var. ''alpina'' (Kollar, 1833) * ''Miramella alpina'' var. ''subalpina'' (Fischer, 1850) * ''Miramella alpina'' var. ''albanica'' Mishchenko, L.L., 1952 - ''Galvagniella albanica'' Mishchenko, L.L., 1952 * ''Miramella alpina'' var. ''collina'' (Brunner von Wattenwyl, 1864) - ''Miramella alpina'' var. ''alpina'' (Kollar, 1833)

Distribution

This common alpine grasshopper is present in

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and

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

.Fauna europaea

Description

The adult males grow up to long, while the females reach of length. The basic coloration of the body is bright green in both sexes, with longitudinal black stripes at the sides of pronotum, extended to the abdomen in males. The light-brown wings usually are very reduced and unfit to flight (

brachyptery Brachyptery is an anatomical condition in which an animal has very reduced wings. Such animals or their wings may be described as "brachypterous". Another descriptor for very small wings is microptery. Brachypterous wings generally are not functi ...

Femora The femur (; ), or thigh bone, is the proximal bone of the hindlimb in tetrapod vertebrates. The head of the femur articulates with the acetabulum in the pelvic bone forming the hip joint, while the distal part of the femur articulates with t ...

of the hind legs are red on the bottom, while

tibiae The tibia (; ), also known as the shinbone or shankbone, is the larger, stronger, and anterior (frontal) of the two bones in the leg below the knee in vertebrates (the other being the fibula, behind and to the outside of the tibia); it connects ...

are yellowish in the females and black in males.

Biology and behavior

They can be encountered from late June through September, mainly in moist mountain meadows, wet clearings and open woods. They feed on grasses, lichens, mosses and various herbaceous plants, with a preference for ''

Vaccinium ''Vaccinium'' is a common and widespread genus of shrubs or dwarf shrubs in the heath family (Ericaceae). The fruits of many species are eaten by humans and some are of commercial importance, including the cranberry, blueberry, bilberry (whort ...

'' species.

References

;Citations ;Bibliography * Galvagni A., 1986 - The situation of the genus Miramella Dovnar-Zapolskij, 1933, in the Balcanic and Carpathic regions (Insecta: Caelifera: Catantopidae). Studi Trentini di Scienze Naturali, Acta Biol. 62 * Roman Asshoff and Stephan Hättenschwiler - Growth and reproduction of the alpine grasshopper Miramella alpina feeding on CO 2-enriched dwarf shrubs at treeline - Oecologia 142, Number 2, 191-201 * Kral K., 2008 - Similarities and differences in the peering-jump behavior of three grasshopper species (Orthoptera, Caelifera). Insect Science 15, 369-374 * Kral K., 2009 - Comparison of the use of active vision for depth perception in three grasshopper families (Orthoptera: Caelifera). Annals of the Entomological Society of America 102, 339-345

External links

Fauna Europaea

Biolib

Orthoptera Species

{{Taxonbar, from=Q732624 Acrididae Insects described in 1833 Orthoptera of Europe