Another from the Alison Baird Reserve, spotted when I nearly stepped on it. Tetrigid grasshoppers. Pygmy Grasshopper are usually under 20mm in size, and this near-adult was smaller than my littlest fingernail. They’re most often found beside ponds and other wetlands, where they eat algae and diatoms. Some species are fully aquatic.
The lower end of the Alison Baird Reserve is seasonally wet, but most of the area is so flat, and has claypan so close to the surface, that it gets waterlogged each winter, from rainfall and water making its way down the Yule Brook Catchment. It’s these conditions that help make it such important habitat for carnivorous plants, and insects like these grasshoppers. Unfortunately, the various councils on the Swan Plain have so industriously built artificial drainage, and encouraged the planting of water-hungry non-native plants, that water levels in the reserve have already measurably declined. Some of the more vulnerable plants, even up in the sand dunes, have already died, and the spectacular and carnivorous Byblis Rainbow Plants are now under very serious threat, even where they didn’t get bulldozed to make way for industrial carparks.
