''Euthystira brachyptera'', the small gold grasshopper, is a species of

grasshopper Grasshoppers are a group of insects belonging to the suborder Caelifera. They are amongst what are possibly the most ancient living groups of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic around 250 million years ago. Grassh ...

belonging to the family

Acrididae Acrididae are the predominant family of grasshoppers, comprising some 10,000 of the 11,000 species of the entire suborder Caelifera. The Acrididae are best known because all locusts (swarming grasshoppers) are of the Acrididae. The subfamily Oedi ...

Subspecies

* ''Euthystira brachyptera brachyptera'' (Ocskay, 1826) * ''Euthystira brachyptera intermedia'' (Bolivar, I., 1897)

Description

''Euthystira brachyptera'' can reach a length of with females tending to be larger. The body color is shiny yellow-green. The wings of the males reach the center of the abdomen, while the wings of the females are very small and often pink or purple. This species could be confused with ''

Euchorthippus declivus ''Euchorthippus declivus'', the Jersey grasshopper or sharp-tailed grasshopper, is a species of short-horned grasshoppers belonging to the family Acrididae, subfamily Gomphocerinae. Description The adult males grow up to long, while the females ...

'' and '' Chrysochraon dispar''. It can be distinguished by means of the sharper top of head and the proportionally smaller eyes. Adults can be found from July to September.Pyrgus.de
/ref>

Distribution and habitat

This species is present in most of Europe, in the eastern

Palearctic realm The Palearctic or Palaearctic is a biogeographic realm of the Earth, the largest of eight. Confined almost entirely to the Eastern Hemisphere, it stretches across Europe and Asia, north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The ...

, and in the

Near East The Near East () is a transcontinental region around the Eastern Mediterranean encompassing the historical Fertile Crescent, the Levant, Anatolia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and coastal areas of the Arabian Peninsula. The term was invented in the 20th ...

.Fauna Europaea
/ref> It prefers mountain and subalpine meadows with tall grasses, heaths with rough vegetation and woodland clearings. It is quite common in calcareous grasslands with ''

Brachypodium pinnatum ''Brachypodium pinnatum'', the heath false brome or tor-grass, is a species of grass with a widespread distribution in temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. It typically grows in calcareous grassland, and reaches tall. The flowerhead is ...

''.Jeffrey Lockwood,Alexandre Latchininsky,Mikhail Georgievich Sergee
Grasshoppers and Grassland Health
/ref>

References

Gomphocerinae Orthoptera of Europe Taxa named by Franz Ocskay {{gomphocerinae-stub