Mountain insect
| Mountain insect | ||||||||||||
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Mountain bite insect ( Metrioptera saussuriana ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Metrioptera saussuriana | ||||||||||||
| ( Frey-Gessner , 1872) |
The mountain bite insect ( Metrioptera saussuriana , syn .: Platycleis noui ) is a long- antenna insect from the subfamily of the Tettigoniinae within the superfamily of the grasshopper .
features
The mountain bite insect is similar to the closely related short-winged bite insect , but shows no green areas on the body. The abdomen is relatively long and thick, the head is large and the pronotum is very slightly elongated backwards. Their wings reach to the middle of the abdomen, the dark antennae are about body length. The lower legs have small spines, whereas those of the front pairs of legs are longer and further apart. The basic color is dark brown to red-brown, the belly is beige. The body is covered in faint, dark drawings, only missing on the thighs. The pronotum lateral lobes are dark black-brown in color and have a narrow, light yellow to whitish border. There is a black-brown spot above and in front of the eye, which is divided by a light, upward-drawn stripe. The wings and legs are usually a little lighter than the body. They are colored light brown to beige. The joint regions of the hind legs are dark gray. The dark red-brown compound eyes have a dark point in the middle. The male has serrated cerci in the middle . The black-colored ovipositor of the female is, in contrast to that of the short-winged bite, shorter and more curved. The mountain snake reaches a body length of 16 to 23 millimeters.
Way of life and distribution
The mountain snake lives on slightly damp mountain meadows in many mountains and low mountain ranges in southern Europe. Its distribution area extends on the Iberian Peninsula from Portugal and Spain over the Pyrenees , southern France to the French and Swiss Jura and the southern and western Alps. Isolated occurrences can be found on the Balearic Islands , Corsica , Sardinia , some north-west French islands and in Central Europe near Salzburg . The species is absent in Germany, but there are localities near the German border such as in the Vosges and the Pfänder area . Adults occur from July to September.
swell
literature
- Heiko Bellmann : The Cosmos Locust Leader. Determine the species of Central Europe with certainty. Franckh-Kosmos Verlags GmbH & Co. KG, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3440104478