Gryllidae: “True Crickets” of Hawai'i

Brief description

Hawai'i is home to over 200 endemic species of crickets (Family: Gryllidae), many of which have been the focus of recent evolutionary studies on island diversification. Their diversity is quite impressive as they have emerged and originated from only a few colonizing species, from North America and the Pacific. However, this is not surprising as many organisms have evolved into a number of new species due to the isolation of the Hawaiian Islands. The UH Insect Museum collection has a variety of cricket specimens, but currently we only have one native species identified: Trigonidium atroferruginem (Brunner, 1896). We hope to improve our holdings of native crickets in the future. For now you can help scientists understand how both native and introduced insect diversity in Hawai'i has changed over time by helping digitize these specimens.This expedition of 261 tasks is fully transcribed and validated. This data resource is harvested periodically into the main occurrence index.