News and Announcements
New Grasshopper Species Added by Mrs. Healy's Class
On October 8, 2003, students in Mrs. Healy's USD 383 class collected grasshoppers for the fall grasshopper inventory. One team netted a rare species known mainly from the Flint Hills. Its scientific name is Paratylotropedia brunneri, named after a famous grasshopper specialist, Dr. Brunner. Most individuals have short wings and do not fly. They feed on buckbrush. Hats off to the collection team!
New Katydid Species Added by Mrs. McFall's Class
Mrs. McFall's 4th and 5th grade students from Morganville Elementary School came to Konza Prairie on September 2, 2003, to participate in the Grasshopper Inventory. They collected a katydid new to the Konza Prairie species list, called a Shield-back Katydid. Congratulations!
Fort Riley Middle School 8th Graders Name a Grasshopper
Mr. Gunderson's 8th grade class visited Konza Prairie in September 2001. During the grasshopper inventory, they caught a grasshopper with the scientific name of Boopedon gracile, but it had no official common name. Dr. Valerie Wright, Konza Prairie Environmental Educator, asked the students to create a common name for this species. The students chose Restored Prairie Calico Grasshopper because the place where it was captured was a field formerly in agriculture but recently restored to prairie by planting native grasses and forbs. The dark mottled appearance of the grasshopper reminded the students of a calico cat. This new common name has been placed in the Konza Prairie grasshopper species list.
Essayists Win Konza Prairie Sweatshirts
Ms. Quinlan teaches at the Hauge Alternative Education Center in Junction City. Her two classes of science students cam to Konza Prairie on September 20 and 21, 2001, to join the Grasshopper Inventory project. Both groups did an excellent job taking data. They added a good number of pinned specimens to the collection with their names on the labels. The students were challenged to write an essay about their experience. The two best writers would receive a sweatshirt for their efforts. Alisha and Jonathan were the winners. The following are some excerpts from their essays.
"The prairie is a really big community of tallgrass. What I mean is Turkeyfoot, Big bluestem, Switchgrass and other kinds of grass. ...The prairie has a lot of grasshoppers and did you know grasshoppers are herbivores which means they eat only plants. But some grasshoppers eat the dead of other grasshoppers! ...There are a lot of hills in the Konza Prairie. The hills are called the Flint Hills...and are full of flint. In the Konza Prairie there are turkeys and goldenrod all over the place." -Jonathan
"When we went to the Flint Hills Konza Prairie, I wasn't really all that excited. ...But when we got there I really started to get into it. ...After we saw the bison and the rock experiment we got to go catch our grasshoppers. ...As a class we caught an abundance of grasshoppers. When we went inside...we were able to see the fat grasshopper that everyone was talking about. When I first saw a grasshopper I thought that there was only one kind...but there are more than just one kind. And I've always thought that they ate meat and other insects, but they are only herbivores. In our community I've never really paid attention to all the things around me. But now that I've had this class I notice the different kinds of grass, plants and insects." - Alisha