Barytettix

Spur-throated grasshoppers in this genus can be distinguished by the presence of a median ventral projection (spur) on the prosternum, a characteristic of the subfamily Melanoplinae. Species-level identification requires examination of male genitalia and other structural features. At least one species (B. psolus) exhibits extreme wing reduction: hindwings are absent and forewings are reduced to immobile vestiges.

Western Mexico and the southwestern United States. GBIF records also indicate presence in northwestern and southwestern Mexico, Arizona, and northeastern and southern Argentina, though the latter records may require verification.

Barytettix psolus is obligately flightless. It lacks hindwings entirely and possesses only immobile vestiges of forewings. The species has lost skeletal specializations for wing movement and lacks pterothoracic muscles dedicated to wing motion. Despite flightlessness, some neural circuits related to flight persist in modified form, including reduced motorneurons that correspond to wing muscle innervation in flying relatives.

• SchistocercaBoth are acridid grasshoppers, but Schistocerca species are powerful fliers with fully developed wings, while at least some Barytettix species are flightless with reduced or absent wings.
• MelanoplusBoth are spur-throated grasshoppers in the subfamily Melanoplinae with prosternal spurs, but Melanoplus is a much larger and more widespread genus with different species distributions and typically fully winged forms.

• flightlessness
• wing reduction
• neuroanatomy
• Mexican fauna
• southwestern US fauna
• spur-throated grasshopper
• Melanoplinae
• Conalcaeini

• BugGuide
• Wikipedia
• GBIF taxonomy match
• iNaturalist taxon
• NCBI Taxonomy
• Catalogue of Life
• Neural correlates of flight loss in a mexican grasshopper, Barytettix psolus. I. Motor and sensory cells
• Neural correlates of flight loss in a mexican grasshopper, Barytettix psolus. II. DCMD and TCG interneurons