I didn’t begin paying serious attention to Orthoptera — that is, grasshoppers, crickets, and katydids — until 2010. But in the 15 years since then, a total of 70 species in this order have been documented here, through either my own efforts or the work of others. New species continue to turn up, but years can go by with no additions to the checklist.
Even when a new species is documented here, it is sometimes hard to tell whether it is a new arrival or merely a species that is scarce or cryptic enough to have evaded detection. Certainly a species like the sphagnum ground cricket, Neonemobius palustris, is a good candidate for the latter case.
It’s a tiny cricket with a whispery song and a close association with sphagnum bogs, where it spends most of its time hidden inside mats of sphagnum. I’ve seen it exactly twice, possibly heard it a few other times, and am not at all surprised that nobody noticed it before. But it’s hard to think of how a species like this could have been absent on the Vineyard and then somehow made its way to an Aquinnah bog for me to find.
Other newly documented Orthoptera strike me as almost certainly new arrivals (or, I suppose, re-establishments of species once present but then somehow extirpated). The common true katydid, Pterophylla camellifolia, represents this category. A gregarious species, the males of which sing a highly distinctive song in deafening choruses, this is a tough one to miss. The fact that neither I nor, as far as I know, anyone else had reported it previously strongly suggests that its appearance on the Vineyard about 10 years ago reflected an arrival, not merely a discovery.
Which brings me to the handsome Trigonidiidae (Trig), Phyllopalpus pulchellus. Never yet recorded on the Vineyard with any certainty, it’s a prime candidate for the next addition to the Vineyard Orthoptera checklist. Small but distinctively colored, with black wings, red head and thorax, and yellowish legs, it cannot be mistaken for any other species. And its song, while a bit less unmistakable, is also pretty distinctive: a sustained trill with a curious metallic quality to it, as if the calling insect has a screw loose.
This is a species of shrubby areas and woodland edges, where males call persistently from concealed perches a few feet off the ground. I’ve sometimes found calling males hidden inside rolled-up leaves. As with many Orthoptera, handsome trigs are somehow ventriloqual; while the song of the male is loud and easy to hear, it is infuriatingly difficult to track down the singer. Many times, a cautious approach has gotten my head to within a foot or so of a calling individual, without my being able to see it. Then I approach just a bit too close, and the covert singer jumps away, drops into the vegetation below, or simply shuts up, leaving me with no way to zero in.
Other evidence supports its absence from the Vineyard. It is not listed at all in a magisterial handbook of New England Orthoptera published in 1920 by the dedicated amateur entomologist Albert P. Morse, suggesting the species was not found anywhere in our region at the time.
In recent years, the handsome trig has expanded its range northward into New England, a process presumably made possible at least in part by longer growing seasons and milder winters associated with climate change. But while Phyllopalpus is now widespread in much of Massachusetts, it is curiously scarce on the coastal plain, and the iNaturalist community science platform shows just three records, all roughly along the Route 6 corridor of the Upper Cape, for the entire Cape and Islands region.
Several factors make me predict the documentation of handsome trig on the Vineyard in the very near future. For one thing, given the pattern of range expansion and the presence of at least a few individuals on Cape Cod, a Vineyard arrival seems likely. For another thing, this species is an able traveler.
I’m not sure the wings help the species move very much; while the wings are complete and presumably functional, I’ve never seen the species fly. But handsome trigs can cling tenaciously to nearly anything, and that includes moving cars. Given the abundance of the species on much of the adjacent mainland, it’d be hard to believe that one won’t hitch a ride here sometime soon.
And indeed, some may have already. On several recent bike rides, I’ve been semi-confident that I have heard the species on East Chop. Rusty on the call, I’m hesitant to say that the species is already here. But I’ll investigate more closely. And if this distinctive species is here, with so many people photographing insects on the Vineyard these days, if I don’t find one, somebody else will. Keep your eyes open!