Ottes Pygmy Cricket
S2, Female, profile
Ellura
Confusing Pygmy Cricket
S2, Female, dorsal
 
                      
Ottes Pygmy Cricket (Calperum ottei)Class: Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta)
Order: Crickets, Grasshoppers & Katydids (Orthoptera)
Family: Pygmy Cricket (Grylloidea: Trigonidiidae)     iNaturalist Observation
Species: Ottes Pygmy Cricket (Calperum ottei)
This Photo:     🔍S2, Female, face🔎

Thank you Matthew Connors & David Muirhead for confirming the id of this species for us

General Species Information:
Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere
1st Live Photo on-line:
Mottled reddish brown crickets with a couple of dark abdominal bands and 2 diagnostic central pale dorsal spots. They have a distinctive horizontal black band covering the lower half of their face; which carries through their eyes.
Her ovi-positor sheaths have finely serrated tips; possibly the reason for the families other common name of "Sword-tail" Crickets.
Females are ~5-6mm, with ovipositor ~3-4mm. We didn't measure our male but according to our source "A guide to Crickets of Australia" by Rentz & Su, males are slightly smaller.
Both genders are wingless.
These are well known in the Murray Mallee, and are often found with Mallee Dwarf Cricket (Territirritia tya) in larger quantities; which we've also experienced.
Given they are a winter species, the January sighting is strange; it was a hot, wet summer.

Copyright © 2019-2024 Brett & Marie Smith. All Rights Reserved. Photographed 25-Jul-2019
This species is an Australian Native Species, not listed in the SA Murray Mallee Survey of 2010.