''Parasanaa'' is a genus of

bush-cricket Insects in the family Tettigoniidae are commonly called katydids (especially in North America), or bush crickets. They have previously been known as "long-horned grasshoppers". More than 8,000 species are known. Part of the suborder Ensifera, t ...

recorded from

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

Indochina Mainland Southeast Asia, also known as the Indochinese Peninsula or Indochina, is the continental portion of Southeast Asia. It lies east of the Indian subcontinent and south of Mainland China and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west an ...

Malesia Malesia is a biogeographical region straddling the Equator and the boundaries of the Indomalayan and Australasian realms, and also a phytogeographical floristic region in the Paleotropical Kingdom. It has been given different definitions. Th ...

through to

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...

. It is represented by a single species, ''Parasanaa donovani''Beier (1944) ''Stett. Entomol. Z.'' 105: 89. This insect has also been called ''Typhoptera donovani'', ''Gryllus donovani''''Parasanaa donovani'' (Donovan 1834)
from Orthoptera Species File (OSF) Online. (Retrieved 3 April 2021). and ''Capnoptera donovani''. The species was described by

Edward Donovan Edward Donovan (1768 – 1 February 1837) was an Anglo-Irish writer, natural history illustrator, and amateur zoologist. He did not travel, but collected, described and illustrated many species based on the collections of other naturalists. H ...

in 1834.Donovan (1834), ''The Naturalist's Repository''. volume 2. As cited on its entry i
ZipcodeZoo.com

Description

The adult is black with lemon-yellow patches on the

thorax The thorax or chest is a part of the anatomy of humans, mammals, and other tetrapod animals located between the neck and the abdomen. In insects, crustaceans, and the extinct trilobites, the thorax is one of the three main divisions of the cre ...

and

tegmina A tegmen (plural: ''tegmina'') designates the modified leathery front wing on an insect particularly in the orders Dermaptera ( earwigs), Orthoptera (grasshoppers, crickets and similar families), Mantodea (praying mantis), Phasmatodea (stick an ...

Habits

It is found throughout August on the

cactus A cactus (, or less commonly, cactus) is a member of the plant family Cactaceae, a family comprising about 127 genera with some 1750 known species of the order Caryophyllales. The word ''cactus'' derives, through Latin, from the Ancient Gree ...

on which it feeds. It is heavy and sluggish, generally still by day, nestled among the cactus thorns, with the front legs and the long antennae stretched forward onto the plant's surface, parallel to each other. To escape predators it would rather drop from the cactus than take flight. It is more active at night, when it feeds and moves about. When the thorax is pinched, the insect squirts a slimy yellow fluid from two slits on the dorsal surface of the

mesothorax The mesothorax is the middle of the three segments of the thorax of hexapods, and bears the second pair of legs. Its principal sclerites (exoskeletal plates) are the mesonotum (dorsal), the mesosternum (ventral), and the mesopleuron (lateral) on ...

, with a range of three to four inches. One aperture may discharge at first, and the other after the insect is pinched again. Some fluid also oozes out from other apertures over the body and legs, and also from the stumps of broken-off legs.

References

External links

*Westwood (1848
colour drawing.
Via the OSF; Accessed on 2013-01-29. *Hingston (1927
schematic drawing showing fluid exudation openings.
Via the OSF; Accessed on 2013-01-29. {{Taxonbar, from=Q10619345 Pseudophyllinae Tettigoniidae genera Monotypic Orthoptera genera Orthoptera of Asia Insects described in 1934

Description

Habits

See also

References

External links