9/29/2021: Rainbow grasshoppers, gems of the desert
For years I have been a huge fan of hemimetabolic insects (holometabolic ones just seem soooo overdone) and among them the classical dictyopteran, with their universally buggy body shape, are an easy pick for my favorites. The appeal of roaches was always the (relative) ease of care; acquiring a dozen species at any point in time has been easy for the last 15 years so starting a collection is very approachable to newbies. Orthopterans, however cool, have never been very popular beyond the feeder crickets.
Most are very sensitive to ventilation, food quality, heat, and a number of other factors that make them unappealing to those learning the ropes of general insect husbandry. The unknown requirements of most species’s egg incubation are another huge hurdle and it’s difficult to generalize by genera; Gryllus pennsylvanicus need to be cooled, Gryllus veletis will die if cooled, Gryllus firmus sometimes needs cooling, etc. Coupled with some taxa being indistinguishable other than calls, this has probably given our jumping friends less attention in culture than they deserve.
Sometimes a super cool species that seems very delicate and picky turns out to be very easy. I have found this to be the case with at least one species of Dactylotum bicolor, the rainbow grasshopper.
These are good size grasshoppers that thrive with good heat and ventilation (think basking reptile husbandry) and, surprisingly, are not picky about their food. Most broad-leaf plants will work despite preferences in the wild by locality, probably related to the sequestration of toxic phytochemicals that has promoted the adaptation of the species’s bright warning colors.
The 2021 Arizona trip yielded sparing numbers of Arizona rainbows which tend to be the most vibrantly colored locality/subspecies, and of the three I brought back the only male died before I could set them up leaving me with one immature female and one hopefully mated adult female.
Fortunately, the central Texas locality I had fawned over after discovering them on the very first southwest trip were out in good numbers I was able to get a group of about 15 of those. For some reason, they were in a different habitat and seem differently colored than when I had encountered them prior, so this leaves me wondering if perhaps the first set from years ago were a different species, a phenotype resulting from feeding on creosote instead of various ground covers, or perhaps just my foggy memory. Maybe time will tell.
The Texas variety/subspecies has been laying many egg clusters while I have yet to see any out of the single possibly fertilized Arizona female. There is a potentially dark desire within me to create what Alan Jeon has referred to as a “hobby line”; a bastardized cross stock that may be more vigorous/heterogenous in captivity at the cost of its purity and perhaps a part of my soul. With a virgin adult female Arizonan in my hands and plenty of eager Texans (this blog post is getting weirder by the minute) following through with such a plan with the benefit being a beautiful captive chimera that may ignite a powder keg of interest in hobby grasshopper keeping would be too easy… I will deliberate more before making such grave decisions.
For now, at least I can feel satisfied in having several cups of Texas rainbow eggs, ready for chilling and eventually for creating a good captive line. Fingers and antennae crossed for good hatches this winter!

-Kyle