| Species | Mole cricket - gryllotalpa gryllotalpa, cricket |
| Habitat | COASTAL FLOODAND AND GRAZING MARSH |
| Background and status | The most distinctive
features of the mole cricket (35-46mm) are its highly adapted forelimbs,
which are specially designed for digging and, unlike other crickets, they
do not possess an ovipositor (an egg-laying tube). Both sexes are dark brown
with a fine covering of velvet hairs, although the vein pattern in the middle
region of the male's forewing differs from the female, the former like a
open tuning fork.
Mole crickets are active throughout the year, but are restricted to damp loose soils, where they feed on insect larvae, cockchafers, owlet moths and worms. Their song, a continuous churring(rrrrr...) sound, is similar to that of the nightjar, or grasshopper warbler, and is usually made by the male at the entrance to his burrow. Like bush crickets, they can detect sound by sense organs located in their knee joints of their fore legs. In late spring, the female takes up to two to three weeks to lay between 100 -200 eggs, which she deposits in an underground chamber. Here she protects them from predators and inhibits potential fungal infections by regularly licking the eggs. The hatchlings emerge within two to three weeks to feed on humus and young roots. Being Hemimetabola insects (those that do not under go a complete metamorphosis) there is no pupa stage, and reach maturity within three years. The mole cricket occurs throughout much of Europe, north Africa and western Asia, but is thought to be declining throughout its range. In the UK the species used to occur in 33 vice-counties, mainly in southern England (also in southern Wales, western Scotland and Northern Ireland). By the mid 20th century its range had contracted substantially to Dorset, Hampshire and Surrey. It may now be extinct, with the last record of a solitary specimen at Wareham, Dorset in 1988, but there have been several unconfirmed records since. |
| Main Threats |
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| Conservation and targets |
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