By Sean Henahan, Access Excellence

LARAMIE, Wyo.(4/22/96)- A rare find of grasshoppers frozen for 800 years in Rocky Mountain glaciers may yield new clues to help combat modern-day versions of this pesky pest that ravages food and forage crops.

"We especially want to find out why one species--the Rocky Mountain Locust--mysteriously began to disappear in the late 1800s and became extinct in the early 1900s," said Richard Nunamaker, a U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist in Laramie, Wyo. He says these grasshoppers had once numbered in the billions.

USDA researchers are using DNA techniques to analyze the grasshopper's genetics in the hope that it may give them a way to understand how this species relates to today's grasshoppers. The analysis may reveal a flaw in the extinct grasshopper, perhaps a genetic trait that decreased its ability to survive, that could become a weapon against present day species, says Nunamaker.

Nunamaker did the grasshooper collecting while on summer vacation at the Knife Point Glacier in Wyoming's Shoshone National Forest. He also collected frozen butterflies, moths, bees, ants, crickets and dragonflies, while on a research team headed by Jeffrey Lockwood of the University of Wyoming. Lockwood studied four glaciers in Montana.

It is likely the grasshoppers and other insects probably became trapped in snow and ice while migrating over mountain ranges in search of food. As much as 90 percent of some glaciers has melted in the past 85 years, exposing the insect life.

"The Rocky Mountain Locust specimens we collected were far better preserved than any previously obtained from glaciers," Nunamaker said. "At times,we and some hungry birds were in a race to pick up specimens. We had to quickly gather them. Birds found the locusts a delicacy and pulled them out as soon as ice melted. And if we and the birds weren't fast enough, melting water quickly washed them away."

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