Striped Raspy Cricket - Paragryllacris combusta
This page contains pictures and information about Striped Raspy Crickets that
we found in the Brisbane area, Queensland, Australia.
- Male, body length 50mm
- Striped Raspy Crickets are also known as Tree Crickets. They are
dark brown to pale brown in colour with fully developed wings. They have
very long antenna, all legs are spiny. They hide in nest on tree
during the day. Their nest is usually two board leaves hold together by
silky material. They are well known for their ability to find the way home
after foraging distance away.
- Female, body length 50mm
- From its sword-like ovipositor
, we can tell the cricket in the pictures is a female.
- The photos show the cricket feeding on nectar from the flowers of the Large
Bird-of-Paradise tree in our front yard. We took the pictures at night on OCT 2000. We noticed
that the cricket climbed up the same tree at the same time every night. It
did the same routine the following days, even after we captured it once, put
it in jar and watched it for a an hour.
- The crickets are nocturnal species and are found wandering around vegetation during the night.
This cricket had a handsome face with contrasted Stripe pattern (few years
later we found that the pattern is to mimic spider, details discussed at
bottom of this page). Notice its maxillas
and labium are highly developed and well extended from its mouth.
Cricket nests in holes in trees and between the leaf-sheaths of plants. We
are wondered how they remember the ways to the food source and return to the
- Nymph, body length 20mm
- On a sunny winter day morning, we saw this Raspy Cricket nymph walking
across the lawn in our backyard.
- Notice their spiny front legs. This may suggest they are predator of
other small insects.
- 1. Insects
of Australia, CSIRO, Division of Entomology, Melbourne University
Press, 2nd Edition 1991, pp 380.
- 2. Grasshopper Country - the Abundant Orthopteroid Insects of Australia, D Rentz, UNSW Press, 1996,
- 3. Insects of Australia and New Zealand - R. J. Tillyard, Angus
& Robertson, Ltd, Sydney, 1926, p95.
- 4. Studies in Australian
Gryllacrididae: Taxonomy, Biology, Ecology and Cytology - Rentz DCF, John B. 1990. Invertebrate Taxonomy 3: 1053-1210.
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