Saturday, October 29, 2011
Hall 1-2 (San Jose Convention Center)
In 1963, Alexander and Hilliard described and documented the life history traits of the mountain grasshopper, Aeropedellus clavatus and also made reference to a specific trait known only to be present in the alpine populations. A. clavatus males appear to exhibit expanded tibia at most elevations which lie above treeline. In addition, a decrease in the level of expansion as altitude decreases is also shown and the trait is significantly more profound in males than in females. With this project we verified previous claims of the presence of expanded tibia in male A. clavatus on several mountains in Colorado by utilizing the University of Colorado Museum Entomology collection and analyzed possible explanations for the function of the trait by combining research conducted in the museum and in the field. In particular, we focused on two specific sites where A. clavatus inhabits and assessed the previous research results, evaluated preserved museum specimens, conducted behavior observations in the field and performed experiments in the Entomology lab.