Any ideas?
Location: Costa Rica – Manuel Antonio
June 23, 2011 1:18 pm
Hello,
My fiancée and I were on a tour of Manuel Antonio park on the Pacific side of Costa Rica this June. At the start of the tour I felt something with some size on my bare leg and spastically kicked it off. What landed on the ground was first identified as a spider, then quickly a grasshopper, then soon nothing they had quite seen. The guides took some quick cell phone pictures and I took the attached. I’d say it’s boday was about 1.5 inches.
Any ideas?
Signature: Thanks, Seth
Dear Seth,
This is not a Grasshopper. It is a Katydid, most likely a Shieldbacked Katydid. We will contact Piotr Naskrecki, a Katydid expert from Harvard, to see if he is able to supply a species identification.
Piotr Naskrecki makes correction
Hi Daniel,
Not a shieldback (Costa Rica doesn’t have any), but a sylvan katydid (Pseudophyllinae). This is a female nymph of Balboana tibialis, a large, lowland forest species that is sometimes attracted to lights.
Cheers,
Piotr