Stenopelmatoidea is a superfamily of

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs ...

s in the

order Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood * Heterarchy, a system of organization wherein the elements have the potential to be ranked a number of d ...

Orthoptera Orthoptera () is an order of insects that comprises the grasshoppers, locusts, and crickets, including closely related insects, such as the bush crickets or katydids and wētā. The order is subdivided into two suborders: Caelifera – grass ...

; in some older classifications this group was referred to as Gryllacridoidea.

Classification

The classification and constituency of Stenopelmatoidea is an ongoing source of controversy, with different authorities proposing radically different arrangements. At present, the majority of researchers appear to be mostly in consensus that Stenopelmatoidea comprises several well-separated lineages, at least three of which (

Anostostomatidae Anostostomatidae is a family of insects in the order Orthoptera, widely distributed in the southern hemisphere. It is named Mimnermidae or Henicidae in some taxonomies, and common names include ''king crickets'' in South Africa and ''wētā'' in ...

, Gryllacrididae, and

Stenopelmatidae The family Stenopelmatidae is composed of large, mostly flightless insects resembling crickets (the family Gryllidae). Two genera: ''Ammopelmatus'' and the type genus ''Stenopelmatus'' are found in the New World. ''Oryctopus'' and ''Sia'' are Old ...

) can be reasonably well-defined, and have molecular evidence that supports their recognition as monophyletic groups.Vandergast, A.G., Weissman, D.B., Wood, D.A., Rentz, D.C., Bazelet, C.S., and Ueshima, N. (2017) Tackling an intractable problem: Can greater taxon sampling help resolve relationships within the Stenopelmatoidea (Orthoptera: Ensifera)? ''Zootaxa'' 4291, no. 1, p. 1. DOI:10.11646/zootaxa.4291.1.1 At least one other authority, working exclusively with morphological characters, has instead proposed that Stenopelmatoidea contains only two lineages (

and

), the latter of which not only includes Gryllacrididae as a subfamily, but also the entire superfamily Schizodactyloidea, similarly reduced to the rank of subfamily (e.g. ), a result explicitly rejected by other researchers. In most classifications, Stenopelmatoidea consists of four families:David C. Eades; Daniel Otte
Orthoptera Species File
/ref> *

– wetas, king crickets * Cooloolidae – Cooloola monsters * Gryllacrididae – leaf-rolling crickets *

– Jerusalem crickets

References

External links

* Insect superfamilies {{ensifera-stub