It's summer. It's very hot. There are lots of insects around and about in the UK right now, and I've been tormenting them with the camera while completely failing to maintain this blog.
This is not one of them:
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| Male? Chongwe, Lusaka, Zambia, March 2013. Olympus E-420 DSLR with Zuiko 40-150mm lens and 3 KOOD magnifiers. |
This little chukululu is, as you may guess from the Chewa introduction, a Zambian. In other languages, this widespread subfamily of crickets are known as Sword-tail crickets in English, and Käfergrille (~black cricket) in German. To, as we've been attempting without much success, give it a more specific label in Chewa, we could translate the English directly to Lupanga-Khombo Chukululu, or perhaps, with an attempt at grammatical correctness, Chukululu ndi Khombo yonga Lupanga.
A more specific identity is a little iffy; it does belong to the genus Trigonidium, and bears a very strong resemblance to members of its putative species,
Trigonidium (Trigonidium) cicindeloides
Rambur, 1838.
There are, however, a fair number of Trigonidium species native to sub-Saharan Africa. None of them, interestingly, are noted by the - brilliant - Orthoptera Species File as recorded from Zambia, but at least two very distinct forms are present in Chongwe district, which correspond in form closely to two widely distributed species recorded from neighbouring countries or - in the case of T. cicindeloides - recorded from an interrupted range of countries that suggest its presence in Zambia. While there are other species described from neighbouring countries, these are of such limited known range and recent distribution that it would be incautious to predict their presence in Zambia.
The location itself is further suggestive of the species the two so closely resemble - both were in an agricultural, regularly disturbed area not far from Lusaka city; notably widespread species, recorded - as both this and the (unshown) T. erythrocephala are - primarily from the most developed corners of the continent - are more likely to have the adaptability to survive, and even thrive, in such a human-dominated environment.
The location itself is further suggestive of the species the two so closely resemble - both were in an agricultural, regularly disturbed area not far from Lusaka city; notably widespread species, recorded - as both this and the (unshown) T. erythrocephala are - primarily from the most developed corners of the continent - are more likely to have the adaptability to survive, and even thrive, in such a human-dominated environment.
So, waffle over, and another angle of our little lupanga-khombo chukululu:
Eukaryota; Animalia; Eumetazoa; Bilateralia; Nephrozoa; Protostomia; Ecdysozoa; Arthropoda; Hexapoda; Insecta; Dicondylia; Pterygota; Metapterygota; Neoptera; Polyneoptera; Anartioptera; Polyorthoptera; Orthopterida; Panorthoptera; Orthoptera; Ensifera; Grylloidea; Gryllidae; Trigonidiinae; Trigonidiini.
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