Abstract:
Through a 3-year survey of 9 stations in North East of Algeria, we recorded 16 species of grasshopper belonging to the family Pamphagidae. The National Park of Belezma, near Batna city, appears to be the richest region for this family, with 10 species. Notably, Paracinipe sulphuripes, only known from Djelfa, is present at Belezma, showing unexpected relationship between these two areas, separated by 280 km. Within the Pamphagus djelfensis complex, a new species is described,P. batnensis Benkenana& Petit, easily distinguishable by its epiphallic characters. Taking into account severalstudies dealing with other Algerian stations, we provide certain climatic constraints of most species, as illustrated by bioclimagrams. We show that the semi-arid stage with fresh winter and sub-humid stage with cold winter correspond to the most suitable conditions for this family.
We studied the diet of 10 species of grasshoppers belonging to the family Pamphagidae. The examination of plant epidermis in faeces allowed to determine all the plant species consumed, by comparison with a bank of epidermis constructed from field samples. All the grasshopper species were revealed to be polyphagous, but the percentages of consumed Poaceae are variable among species. Tmethisand Ocneridiafeed on Poaceae at a higher rate than other species and are considered as ambivores. In Pamphagusgr. djelfensis, the three species rather avoid Poaceae and are qualified as forbivore. Their diet cannot be distinguished between each other. We also compared the frequency of Fabaceae in the faeces to their abundance in the field, and O. volxemiiis the only species avoiding this plant family.
The sensilla repertoire in the labrum was also studied in both sexes of each species. Once the size effect of labrum is removed, we found that forbivore species harbour higher numbers of sensilla of type A1, A2, and A3 (but not A10) than ambivore species. This last category is more abundant in Pamphagidae than in Acrididae where graminivore diet is prevalent, suggesting a food mode adapted to semi-arid conditions.
