Des Allemands gardener spots pink katydid. Pigment puzzles scientists

A Des Allemands man found a rare bug munching on his garden and snapped a photo of it. The critter’s bright pink coloring has scientists stumped.

Monique Loup’s father found a pink katydid hopping in his garden Aug. 19. He didn’t want to be part of the story, but sent the photo to Loup, who shared it with the Daily Comet.

Katydids are usually green, so the pink coloring caught his eye. Scientists aren’t sure how rare the elusive pink variations are, Audubon Insectarium’s Curator of Animal Collections Zack Lemann said. One thing is certain — the coloring is genetic.

“This is what I found most fascinating,” Loup said via email. “I tend to geek-out over genetics.”

Katydids are closely related to grasshoppers and crickets, with several thousand species around the world. They exhibit camouflage, often resembling leaves, as a form of protection from predators. While the pink coloring is uncommon, it’s not unheard of, and there are other strange colors that turn up, like yellow. Lemann said scientists aren’t sure what causes colors like pink because they lack a sufficient number of bugs to study.

“The punchline is that nobody knows what genetically makes them pink,” Lemann said.

Whether the bugs are masters of hiding, or they get gobbled up by predators, the lack of specimens to study leaves the door wide open for possibilities.

A few of the possibilities include erythrism, a condition that creates an abundance of red pigment in an animal; a mutation that is yet to be understood; or even an intended form of camouflage.

“The question that’s often asked is, ‘Don’t these things get seen by predators and preferentially picked off?,’ and that could be a reason why we don’t see a lot of them,” Lemann said. “My answer to that is that it’s possible, but nobody has done a field study, partly because they are not common enough in the first place. The other possibility is that there aren’t enough pink ones that hatch in the first place.”

Leeman said pink katydids could rest on red foliage and flowers and their camouflage works just fine. The bright color  also could be designed to bluff predators into thinking that the katydid is toxic. One way or the other, Lemann said, nobody currently knows.

While it’s unknown exactly how many exist in the wild, the Audubon Insectarium gets about six phone calls a year from people spotting pink katydids.

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