By Steven Pereanu
General Information
You may have noticed that in the upper courtyards at the Academies of Loudoun there are a lot of grasshoppers. These grasshoppers are known as Differential Grasshoppers, Melanoplus differentialis. You may be unfamiliar with the name because they are uncommon in Virginia, but near the Mississippi River they are more common. Differential Grasshoppers are able to fly far distances and can fly to quite high altitudes. They also live one year dying in the winter and hatching in spring .They lay over 100 eggs at a time. When they hatch, they are in a larval stage known as nymphs, which can’t fly. The nymphs then go through 5 stages to be able to fly and become adults; each stage take a month or two.
Why the Academies?
The reason they are in such numbers in the courtyard is because there is a type of ragweed in the courtyard which is one of their favorite foods. Also, because they are able to fly they can access the courtyard before their competitors.
The Future of the Grasshoppers:
I predict there are three probable futures for the grasshoppers. The first is that they keep reproducing, but the population will remain constant as they die from being stepped on or similar ways of death. The second path is that they overpopulate and kill the plants off and then die of starvation. The third is we kill them off (this would probably just keep the population constant as they would keep on coming from the woods).