Orthoptera

• WordNet 3.6
  • n Orthoptera grasshoppers and locusts; crickets
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• • prop. n. pl Orthoptera (Zoöl) An order of mandibulate insects including grasshoppers, locusts, cockroaches, mantids, crickets, katydids, etc. See Illust. under Insect.☞ The anterior wings are usually thickened and protect the membranous posterior wings, which are larger and fold longitudinally like a fan. They also have chewing mouth parts. The Orthoptera undergo no metamorphosis.
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• • Orthoptera An order of the class Insecta proposed by Olivier in 1789 for certain straight-winged insects which Linnæus had placed in Hemiptera, and to which De Geer in 1773 had restricted the order Hemiptera, placing the true bugs in a new order Dermaptera. The order as now understood contains insects in which metamorphosis is incomplete and wings are almost always present, of which the hinder pair are dilated, folded from the base, and of membranous texture, while the fore pair are more or less coriaceous, usually narrow and straight (but variable in this respect), and thickly veined. These insects are active and capable of feeding in all stages from birth to death. Seven families — or, as some consider, tribes or supcrfamilies — are now recognized. These are the Blattidæ, or cockroaches; Mantidæ, or praying-insects; Phasmidæ, or walking-sticks; Gryllidæ, or crickets; Locustidæ, or long-horned grasshoppers or katydids; and Acrididæ, or short-horned grasshoppers or true locusts, including the migratory species. (See locust for an explanation of the fact that the Locustidæ are not locusts.) The Orthoptera are in the main herbivorous, but the Mantidæ are carnivorous, and some of the Blattidæ are omnivorous. They are found all over the world, but most numerously in the tropics, where among them are the largest known representatives of the whole insect class. All the known species are terrestrial or arboreal, no aquatic forms having been discovered; and according to their habitual mode of progression the families have been grouped by Westwood as Cursoria, Raptoria, Ambulatoria, and Suliatoria. The Orthoptera are among the earliest forms of insect life to appear in geologic time, and the Blattidæ in particular are very numerous in some geological formations. The main characters used in classifying the Orthoptera are derived from the modifications of the genitals, mouth-parts, and antennæ. See cuts under Blattidæ, Gryllidæ, Insecta, katydid, locust, and Mantis.
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• • n Orthoptera or-thop′tėr-a an order of insects with wing-covers, that overlap at the top when shut, under which are the true wings, which fold lengthwise like a fan
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