Cytogenetic and Meiotic Studies Reveal Conservatism in Acrida turrita (Linnaeus 1758) (Orthoptera: Acrididae) from Lagos, Nigeria

Abstract

Grasshoppers are a group of herbivorous insects in the order Orthoptera and suborder Caelifera (Ragge, 1965; Meinzingen, 1993). Globally, there are about 11,000 known species of grasshoppers distributed in six families and several genera. The genus Acrida is one of the most diverse genera in the order (Gupta and Chandra, 2018). Acrida turrita (Family Acrididae or Acridomorphoidea) is a short-horned grasshopper found in many parts of the world, often regarded as giant green slant face grasshopper. The males have a diploid chromosome number of 23, with an X0 constitution (Brown, 1972). Several cytogenetic studies have shown that 23 uniform and conserved acrocentric chromosomes made up of 22 autosomes and an X chromosome are found in the grasshoppers of the family Acrididae and this conservation has been reported