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jumping bush cricket

Orocharis saltator

distribution map for orocharis saltator
Dots show county records; shaded area shows likely general distribution.
Computer-generated distribution map, produced in 2003 from records in a database available on this site.

Cleveland naturalist, Lisa Rainsong, has documented a recent expansion of the range of this species into extreme northeast of Ohio and along Lake Erie into Pennsylvania. The density of Ohio records on this and other SINA maps reflects the listening records of E.S. Thomas (1891-1982) as he travelled throughout Ohio giving talks on natural history as Curator of Natural History (1931-1962) of the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society.

Shortly after the new Ohio records were added to the map, Dave Funk and Wil Hershberger called attention to two additional northward range extensions for this species: Cambridge, Massachusetts (30Sep2014 blog by Piotr Naskrecki) and Ithaca, New York (Lang Eliott, listening records). It is worth noting that this species is rarely collected but has an usually loud and distictive song. Most of the records on this map are listening records. The blank area between the eastern and midwestern ranges of the species is scant support for its absence there.

Chris Maier (2017) added 24 new records for Orocharis saltator in Connecticut, a state for which SINA (2016) showed no records. His records were specimen-based and were from 5 of Connecticut's 8 counties between 2006 and 2016. The three dots on the above map represent Maier's west-, north-, and east-most county records.

In email, Alicia Houk reported that she and Dave Funk had identified the calling song of O. saltator on two videos made by Alicia on 5Oct2020 in Ottumwa, Wapello County, Iowa. (The song is loud and easily distinguished from that of any other U.S. cricket.)