Gryllomorpha (Gryllomorphella) miramae Medvedev, 1933

Iorgu, Ștefan, Chobanov, Dragan, Skolka, Marius, Zaharia, Răzvan & Iorgu, Elena Iulia, 2019, The first record of genus Gryllomorpha Fieber in Romania (Orthoptera: Gryllidae: Gryllomorphinae), Zootaxa 4543 (4), pp. 581-583 : 581-583

publication ID

https://doi.org/ 10.11646/zootaxa.4543.4.5

publication LSID

lsid:zoobank.org:pub:B77B47AB-4D48-427D-8962-28EFC1C5852F

DOI

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5943744

persistent identifier

https://treatment.plazi.org/id/3F27BB1D-1A53-FFE4-B895-F8C0FF53D557

treatment provided by

Plazi

scientific name

Gryllomorpha (Gryllomorphella) miramae Medvedev, 1933
status

 

Gryllomorpha (Gryllomorphella) miramae Medvedev, 1933 View in CoL

Examined material: 1 ♀ (nymph), 2018.0 8.0 5, quarry west of Credința village, Constanța county, Romania, 43.9782°N 28.2277°E, 70 m ASL (obs. M. Skolka) GoogleMaps ; 5 ♀♀, 2018.0 8.25, same locality (leg. I. Ș. Iorgu & R. Zaharia) GoogleMaps ; 2 ♀♀, 2018.0 9.28, same locality (leg. I. Ș. Iorgu & R. Zaharia) GoogleMaps ; 1 ♀, 2018.0 8.28, Techirghiol lake , Constanța county, Romania, 44.0243°N 28.6101°E, 10 m ASL (leg. I. Ș. Iorgu & R. Zaharia) GoogleMaps .

In early August 2018, on a typically hot and sunny Dobrogean day, one of the authors (M.S.) observed a young cricket nymph while actively searching for insects under stones in a sarmatic quartzose sands quarry nearby the village of Credința ( fig. 1 View FIGURE 1 ). Based on the taken photography, the insect was identified as most likely Gryllomorpha , a previously unknown cricket for the Romanian fauna. Several days later, an attempt of finding the insects at sundown was a disappointing failure. At the end of the summer, we decided to search for the crevice crickets at night, about two hours after the sunset. This time, the quest was successful and we managed to find five adult females at the light of headlamps, clearly identified as G. miramae ( fig. 1 View FIGURE 1 ). Later on, the species was accidentally captured on a Barber trap placed on the shores of Techirghiol lake, along with numerous Gryllus campestris Linnaeus, Melanogryllus desertus (Pallas) and Modicogryllus truncatus (Tarbinsky) nymphs.

Gryllomorpha miramae View in CoL is a nocturnal species, during the day staying hidden under stones or in the porous sarmatic rocks and possibly also in caves. In Bulgaria, the crevice cricket was recorded in dry stony areas within maquis ( Quercus coccifera View in CoL communities), steppe-like habitats on limestone and Quercus View in CoL sp., Carpinus orientalis View in CoL communities up to 600 m ( Chobanov 2003 and own unpublished data). Even more interestingly, Medvedev indicated that the type specimens of Gryllomorpha miramae View in CoL were collected in Citellus View in CoL burrows ( Gorochov 2009).

Gryllomorpha miramae View in CoL is characterized by a transversally striped pattern of dark and light brown, and Gorochov (2009) notes that the coloration is rather variable within the species: specimens from Europe have a clearly noticeable darkened area on the face, and dark, wide bands on body, while in individuals from Asia, the head is almost homogeneously yellowish and the body is shaded with narrow brownish stripes.

Despite the fact that Dobrogea is the most studied historical region in Romania, being frequently visited by biologists, several new findings within the past years proved that ambitious, exhaustive field work in unknown territories can produce surprizing results when it comes to survey the orthopterans, such as the finding of Zeuneriana amplipennis (Brunner von Wattenwyl, 1882) , Vichetia oblongicollis (Brunner von Wattenwyl, 1882) ( Iorgu 2011) , Gryllotalpa stepposa Zhantiev, 1991 ( Iorgu et al. 2016), Parapholidoptera castaneoviridis (Brunner von Wattenwyl, 1882) ( Iorgu et al. 2017) . The discovery of Gryllomorpha miramae in south-eastern Romania completes the distribution picture of this species, bridging the gap between the known occurrence areas.

R

Departamento de Geologia, Universidad de Chile

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Arthropoda

Class

Insecta

Order

Orthoptera

Family

Gryllidae

Genus

Gryllomorpha

Loc

Gryllomorpha (Gryllomorphella) miramae Medvedev, 1933

Iorgu, Ștefan, Chobanov, Dragan, Skolka, Marius, Zaharia, Răzvan & Iorgu, Elena Iulia 2019
2019
Loc

Gryllomorpha miramae

Medvedev 1933
1933
Loc

Gryllomorpha miramae

Medvedev 1933
1933
Loc

Gryllomorpha miramae

Medvedev 1933
1933
Loc

Citellus

Oken 1816
1816
Loc

Carpinus orientalis

Mill 1768
1768
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