While exploring a series of rocky pools, we spotted a huge cricket walking toward the water. To our astonishment, the cricket didn’t even slow down as it entered the water, continuing about a meter down to the bottom of the frigid, crystal-clear pool. An aquatic cricket? Later, when the insect emerged from the pool, I snapped a couple of photos. When I asked our guide about the creature, he said he’d seen them before, and they were called “grillo de agua” – literally “water cricket.” But he didn’t know much else about them.
A colloquial name was all the information I had about this remarkable creature until a couple of weeks ago, when I met Harvard entomologist (and incredible macro photographer) at the NANPA Summit. Piotr gave a fascinating lecture called “Photographing the Sixth Extinction,” focusing on his travels to remote, often highly imperiled areas to find and photograph their unique inhabitants before they are lost forever. He is also a world authority on the Orthoptera, so I sent him my picture of the “grillo de agua,” hoping he could give me some more information.
Amazingly, he was able to identify the cricket immediately: Hydrolutos roraimae, in the family Anostostomatidae. Even more incredibly, I learned that this species, and indeed its entire genus (which includes four species, all endemic to the tepuis), was only described scientifically in 1999. According to the species description, these crickets subsist on algae that they find growing on rocks underwater, and they can stay submerged for 20 minutes at a time. They can also swim at the rather alarming rate of 1 m/sec! The individual I photographed was a female, as evidenced by the curved ovipositor (egg-laying organ) protruding from her abdomen.
I hope I can get back to the tepuis someday. Each one has its own unique complement of plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth, and if an entire genus of finger-sized crickets went undescribed until 1999, I’m sure there’s still lots to be discovered up there!
Check out Piotr Naskrecki’s and his remarkable book, .
A female Hydrolutos roraimae rests on the pink sandstone of Mt. Roraima.
A view from Mt. Roraima's 2810m summit. From the Gran Sabana grasslands below to the top of the tepui, Roraima's vertical walls are 800m high.