A morphological comparison of antipodean Teleogryllus species (Orthoptera:Gryllidae).

The common "black" field crickets from different areas of Australia and New Zealand have generally been treated previously as belonging to a single species, Teleogryllus commodus: (Walker), although other related species, such as T. oceanicus (Le Guillou) have been recorded from various parts of Australia (see Chopard (1951) and Leroy (1964a)). Owing to close morphological similarities among allopatric specimens, no critical attempt to separate morphological species was made until this was done by Leroy (1964b). However, studies from physiological and genetical approaches have been made by several authors, who have shown that "T. commodus" populations constitute different entities isolated reproductively as well as physiologically (Browning, 1952a, 1952b; Hogan, 1960; Bigelow, 1962; Bigelow and Cochaux, 1962; Cochaux, 1964; and Leroy, 1963, 1964a, 1964b). Recently, Leroy (1964b) has shown that, on the basis of the morphology of the sound-producing organs, Australian Teleogryllus commodus and Pacific Island Teleogryllus oceanicus are clearly different. Leroy's results have thus indicated that it is possible to differentiate members of the commodus group by means of morphological characters. The present work, begun before Leroy's (l.c.) work was published, attempts to differentiate Antipodean populations formerly referred to T. commodus by comparing morphometrical characters statistically. [...