Book

Description

The grasshopper family Pyrgomorphidae is one of the most colorful orthopteran lineages. Some species are huge and so brightly coloured that they sometimes are called Gaudy grasshoppers. The Indian subcontinent is known to harbor a high level of insect biodiversity and endemism, but the grasshopper fauna in this region is poorly understood. Based on detailed examinations of museum specimens and high-resolution digital images, i have produced an illustrated key to 21 Pyrgomorphidae genera known from the Indian subcontinent. This new identification key will become a useful tool for increasing our knowledge on the taxonomy of grasshoppers in this important biogeographic region. Recent attempts to reconstruct the phylogeny of this family have resulted in a large degree of conflicts between a morphology-based study and a molecular-based study, mainly due to convergent morphological traits that affected phylogenetic reconstruction. In second part of this book, a molecular phylogeny of Pyrgomorphidae based on 32 ingroup species and mitochondrial genome data is proposed, which is used to test the monophyly of the taxonomic groupings used in the current classification scheme. Using the ancestral character state reconstruction analyses and character mapping, I have demonstrate that some of the morphological characters, including the male genitalia, which were considered to be taxonomically important, have evolved convergently across the phylogeny. I have discussed the discrepancies between my phylogeny and the previous studies and proposed an approach to establish a natural classification scheme for Pyrgomorphidae.